LIBRARY

OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

Deceived ..71017-,.
^Accessions No. ^.ifRQ . Class No.

GHAU7AUQUA LIBRARY GARNET SERIES.

A MEMOIR

ROGER ASCHAM.

BY

SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
(ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LONDON IN 1763.)

WITH AN INTRODUCTION

BY

JAMES H. CARLISLE,

PRESIDENT OF WOFFORD COLLEGE, SPARTANBURG, S.C.

NEW YORK :

CHAUTAUQUA PRESS,

150 — 5th AVENUE.

1890.

•&SJMtt*^

Copyright, 1890, by C. W. BARDEEN, Syracuse, N. Y.

ASCHAM AND ARNOLD.

MEMOIR OF ROGER ASCHAM, - pp. 1-54.

MEMOIR OF THOMAS ARNOLD, - pp. 55-252.

INTRODUCTION.

ROGER ASCHAM (As'-kam) has a claim on all English-
reading people. He is called, by the best critics, one
of the fathers of English prose. In his youth, his
native language had no great work in poetry, history,
or philosophy. The wonderful art of printing was in
its infancy. His father may have read the first book
printed in England when fresh from the press. Soon
after Ascham, a constellation of great writers adorned
the latter years of Elizabeth's reign. At his death,
Shakspeare was four years old, Bacon seven, Sidney
fourteen, and Spenser sixteen.

His first work, " TOXOPHILUS," published in his
twenty-third year, was a defence of the bow, which
he looked upon as furnishing a manly recreation, as
well as a national defence, to Englishmen. The year
of publication, 1544, was the date when pistols were first
used by English horsemen. The musket was first used
a few years before, 1521. Ascham could not know
that these strange weapons would soon come to be
considered as the strong " arms " of English soldiers.
Three years after "Toxophilus" appeared, bows were

2 INTRODUCTION.

used with effect, for the last time, on the field of
Pinkie, where the Scotch were forced to give way
before the arrows of their invaders. As a pleasant
recreation, Archery, at intervals, comes into fashion
for a time, as it did with us a few years ago. The
lovers of archery show their gratitude to Ascham by
giving his name to the closet in which their weapons
are kept.

But the work on the Bow has a permanent value in
our history. It marks an era in the growth of our
language. He dedicated it to his king, Henry VIII.,
apologizing for writing in English, and offering to pre-
pare a Greek or Latin version if desired. He says,
" To have written in another tongue had been more
profitable for my study, and more honest [honorable]
for my name ; yet I can think my labour well bestowed,
if, with a little hindrance of my profit and name, may
come any furtherance to the pleasure or commodity
•of the gentlemen and yeomen of England. As for the
Latin or Greek tongue, every thing is so excellently
•done in them, that none can do better ; in the English
tongue, contrary, every thing in a manner so meanly
doth for the matter and handling, that no man can do
worse"

This little book, on two occasions, turned the cur-
rent of the author's life. Henry was graciously pleased
to reward him on its first appearance ; and a few years
later, Edward renewed his pension for its sake. His
" Report and Discourse of the Affairs of Germany " is
the only other work published in his lifetime.

INTRODUCTION. 3

Ascham has an additional claim on all who are inter-
ested in educational literature. He is the first who
wrote in our language on such subjects. He left, in
manuscript, an unfinished work, "THE SCHOLEMASTER,"
which was published by his widow in 1570. Extracts
from this book, and the " Preface to the Reader," will
be given in another chapter. It has had a rather sin-
gular history. Within twenty years of the author's
death, five editions were issued. For more than a
century it was then strangely overlooked. In 1711
Rev. James Upton published an edition of "The
Schole master," with explanatory notes. Again, in
1 743, Upton issued another edition, " revised a second
time, and much improved." In 1763 the "English
Works of Roger Ascham " were published in London
by James Bennet as editor. For this edition, Dr.
Samuel Johnson wrote a memoir of the author. This
is so good a specimen of the great Doctor's peculiar
style, and is so instructive every way, that it is now
republished entire.

There is something to interest the general reader in
this brief record of a life, which had connection, more
or less intimate, with four successive English sover-
eigns,— Henry VIII., Edward VI, Mary, and Eliza-
beth. Under the last three, he held the post of Latin
secretary, an honorable office, like that which Milton
held under Cromwell a century later. While doing
much to give beauty and force to his own language, he
was a passionate lover of Latin and Greek. Dr.
Johnson bears testimony to Ascham's skill in the

4 INTRODUCTION.

manual art of writing. His successors in the " schole-
room " should avoid the two opposite mistakes that
may be easily made in this matter. To be a " good
scribe " is not the only qualification needed in a teacher.
Yet to write legibly is not so trifling an accomplish-
ment that it may be neglected. Do not schools and
colleges in our day dismiss many pupils untaught in
this elementary part of a common education ?

Very much of the scholarship of that day consisted
in the study of Latin, and especially of Greek, then
becoming fashionable in literary circles. It is difficult
for us to conceive the interest with which scholars
then discussed the question of admitting this new
study, and the true pronunciation of the alphabet.
Wade, in his " British History,' ' says, " Many, both of
the secular and regular clergy, railed against the Greek
Testament of Erasmus as an impious and dangerous
book. At Oxford they were divided into factions, —
one assuming the name of Greeks, the other of
Trojans. As the Trojans were the most numerous,
they were the most insolent. When a poor Greek
appeared in the street in any public place, he was
attacked by the Trojans with hisses, taunts, and insults
of all kinds. But the triumphs of the Trojans were
of short duration. Henry VIII. and Wolsey having
warmly espoused the cause of the Greeks, their num-
bers, their credit, and their courage daily increased :
the Greek language became a favorite study, and the
Trojans were obliged to retire from the field.'1 Ascham
left no original work in Greek or Latin, not even a

INTRODUCTION. 5

new edition of a favorite classical author. Still, he
was an enthusiastic reader and teacher of the classics
all through life. He was the tutor of Elizabeth in her
early years, when she scarcely expected to reach the
throne. After her accession it was very honorable to
both parties that she invited her old teacher to come
and still direct her studies. He read with her most
of the works of Cicero, the greater portion of Livy,
select portions of Isocrates, the Tragedies of Sophocles,
the Greek Testament, and other works. She wrote
several volumes, which show her skill as a linguist.
When she visited Oxford, she readily replied in Latin
to a learned address of welcome. Her teacher says,
" I learn more from her than she from me : I teach
her words, while she teaches me things." It is prob-
able that some of the milder traits that throw a redeem-
ing light on the strong character of the imperious Virgin
Queen were due to the influence of her teacher.

As to his manner of teaching, we know nothing, ex-
cept as he has explained it in his treatise. With his
scholarship and enthusiasm, and with such pupils as
he usually had, he could do good work, with any plan,
or in the absence of a plan. The transition from a
teacher in the sixteenth century, with a few noble
pupils, to the teacher in the nineteenth century, ruling
forty little " sovereigns " in this New World, is very
great. Yet there are lessons in Ascham's life for us.
He was happy in his work. When absent in Ger-
many, he looked back longingly to his work at home.
His views on discipline were far in advance of his

0 INTRODUCTION.

time. His genial, sympathetic spirit furnishes some
good lessons to the teachers of to-day. He received
only a moderate salary, and doubtless he had to prac-
tise economy, not an easy thing in a court. He was
unselfish. If extravagant, it was not in dress, or style
of living, but in buying books. He once offered to
commute a part of his " fees " for an old classical
book. " He was ready to assist students with advice,
and generous to poor scholars," said a contemporary.
This short sentence may open a wide door of useful-
ness to the teacher with a scanty income. Sympathy
and kindness may do much good with little money.
The old teacher was not above the professional weak-
ness of boasting about his distinguished pupils. Let
the American schoolmaster who can keep his republi-
can humility when several pupils have reached titles
and crowns, prepare to cast a stone ! He was grate-
ful to his old teachers. He often refers kindly to his
illustrious " master, John Cheke." About another of
his teachers he says something worth quoting for the
reader : " Doctor Nico Medcalfe, that honourable father,
was Master of S. John's College when I came thither ;
a man meanly learned himself, but not meanly affec-
tioned to set forward learning in others. . . . Truly
he was partial to none, but impartial to all ; a master
for the whole, a father to every one in that College.
There was none so poor, if he had either will in good-
ness, or wit to learning, that could lacke being there,
or should depart from thence for any need. I am wit-
ness myself, that money many times was brought into

INTRO D UCTION. 7

young men's studies by strangers whom they knew not.
... I myself, one of the meanest of a great number
in that College, because there appeared in me some
small show of towardness and diligence, lacked not
his favour to further me in learning." And thus, a
man, himself "meanly furnished with knowledge,"
may kindle the torch of a young Ascham : the stream
of learning may rise above its source. This is an in-
spiring thought to the earnest teacher.

As a man, there is much in him to excite our inter-
est, and even our admiration. The reigns of his four
monarchs span an eventful period of history. The
faithful teacher passed through it, in the main, un-
tainted. He knew how to close eyes and ears when
necessary. He served his pupil and his queen, hold-
ing this double, delicate relation, and meeting all its
most exacting demands. He did not beg or fawn. He
was grateful, but not obsequious, to patrons. He re-
spected alike himself and his sovereign. We may
regret that an excessive caution, or indolence, hindered
his pen from doing all the service it was so able to
render. His diary, kept through these critical years,
would now be a great treasure to the lover of minute
history, and to the student of human nature. No
gossip or intrigue is associated with the memory of
Elizabeth's teacher. The public history of her reign
could be written without alluding to his name, perhaps.
It is true, unfortunately, that he did not move the
Queen to any great liberality towards schools or schol-
ars. She endowed Dublin University and Westminster

8 INTRODUCTION.

School. Her long reign shows no other benefaction
to institutions of learning. But Aschara did not ad-
vance his own interests by her affection for him. The
associate of nobles and monarchs all through his pub-
lic life, he died poor, leaving his children no legacy
but his fame, and the unfinished manuscript of " The
Scholemaster." Dr. Johnson very delicately alludes
to his love of gaming. It is quite probable, that, in
this matter, he did not rise above the customs of the
day. A contemporary historian, after describing the
baiting of bulls and bears, adds, "To this entertain-
ment, there follows that of whipping a blinded bear,
which is performed by five or six men, standing circu-
larly with whips, which they exercise on him without
mercy, as he cannot escape from them, because of his
chain. He defends himself with all his force and
skill, throwing them down that come within his reach,
and not active enough to get out of it, and tearing
their whips out of their hands, and breaking them."
The Queen encouraged such sports. Here is the pro-
gramme for a few days, from the "Sidney Papers:"
"This day she appoints a Frenchman to doe feats
upon a rope in the conduit-yard ; to-morrow, she has
commanded the bears, the bulls, and the apes to be
bayted in the tilt-yard ; and, on Wednesday, she will
have solemne dauncing." Among the offices she con-
ferred on her favorite teacher, was that of her " bear-
keeper," — not altogether a sinecure, it is to be feared.
In such an age, we cannot imagine that all the dice-
throwing and card-playing were " just for fun." Man-

INTRODUCTION. 9

ners and morals were at a low ebb in some respects.
Let us try to imagine a " bear-baiting in the tilt-yard "
of Windsor Palace, honored by the presence of the
noble woman who to-day sits on Elizabeth's throne.
We readily see that the three centuries between the
two queens have witnessed some changes. Vinet says,
"The conscience of humanity never restores any of
its conquests." The friends of "humanity" should
neither despond, nor be very sanguine.

While throwing the veil of charity over the recrea-
tions of the courtly schoolmaster, we may be interested
01 amused at the coloring which they occasionally give
tc his style. Thus, in the posthumous treatise, he says,
"I dare venture a good wager," etc. Again, " I have
been a looker-on in the cock-pit of learning these
many years." Let us, however, follow the advice of
Dr. Johnson, and think of the learning, virtues, and ex-
cellences of Ascham, rather than of the frailties of his
age. which he shared. Even his gaming does not seem
to have familiarized him with debts or dishonor. In
an aje of persecution and bloodshed, there is no stain
on ms memory. At a time of religious bigotry, he
kept Hs consistency and the respect of all parties to
an unusual degree. He was a lover of peace, good
men, and good books. As far as can be known, his
language and his life were pure. Such outward tests
of a religous character as can be applied, place him
in a favonble light. " His conversation had a strain
of unaffected piety in it, and he was regular in his pri-
vate devotions. The topics of discussion among his

IO INTRODUCTION.

friends were of God ; the iniquity and malice of man-
kind ; the effects of God's benevolence towards them ;
the grand designs of Providence, to lead men to their
greatest and ultimate happiness." Such is the testi-
mony of one who knew him well. He died in his fifty-
third year, — about the age to which Shakspeare at-
tained. Elizabeth gave a characteristic proof of her
regret, by saying, " I would rather have thrown ten
thousand pounds into the sea, than lose my Ascham."
His learned contemporary, George Buchanan of Scot-
land, wrote an " Epigram," which may stand as a just
estimate of the man.

" Aschamum extinctum patriae Graiae Camenae
Et Latinae vera cum pietate dolent.
Principibus vixit carus, jucundus amicis,
Re modica ; in mores dicere fama nequit."

It has been freely translated thus : —

" His country's Muses join with those of Greece
And mighty Rome to mourn the fate of Ascham.
Dear to his Prince, and valued by his friends,
Content with humble views, thro' life he passed r
While envy's self ne'er dared to blast his name/

JAS. H. CARLISLE.

SPARTANBURG, S.C., April 13, 1886.

OF

TJHIVERSITT

ROGER ASCHAM.

BY SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.

CHAPTER I.

IT often happens to writers, that they are known,
only by their works ; the incidents of a literary life
are seldom observed, and therefore seldom recounted : .
but Ascham has escaped the common fate by the
friendship of Edward Graunt, the learned master of
Westminster school, who devoted an oration to his,
memory, and has marked the various vicissitudes of
his fortune. Graunt either avoided the labor of mi-
nute inquiry, or thought domestic occurrences unworthy
of his notice ; or, preferring the character of an orator
to that of an historian, selected only such particulars
as he could best express or most happily embellish.
His narrative is therefore scanty, and I know not by
what materials it can now be amplified.

ROGER ASCHAM was born in the year 1515, at Kirby
Wiske (or Kirby Wicke), a village near Northallerton,
in Yorkshire, of a family above the vulgar. His father,

12 ROGER ASCHAM.

John Ascham, was house-steward in the family of
Scroop, and in that age, when the different orders
of men were at a greater distance from each other, and
the manners of gentlemen were regularly formed by
menial services in great houses, lived with a very con-
.spicuous reputation. Margaret Ascham, his wife, is
said to be allied to many considerable families ; but
her maiden name is not recorded. She had three
sons, of whom Roger was the youngest, and some
daughters ; but who can hope, that, of any progeny,
more than one shall deserve to be mentioned? They
lived married sixty-seven I years, and at last died to-
.gether, almost on the same hour of the same day.

Roger, having passed his first years under the care
of his parents, was adopted into the family of Antony
Wingfield, who maintained him, and committed his
education, with that of his own sons, to the care of
one Bond, a domestic tutor. He very early discovered
an unusual fondness for literature by an eager perusal
of English books, and, having passed happily through
the scholastic rudiments, was put, in 1530, by his
.patron, Wingfield, to St. John's College, in Cambridge.

Ascham entered Cambridge at a time when the last
.great revolution of the intellectual world was filling
every academical mind with ardor or anxiety. The
destruction of the Constantinopolitan empire had
driven the Greeks with their language into the interior
parts of Europe. The art of printing had made the
tbooks easily attainable, and the Greek now began to

1 Other authorities say forty-seven. — C.

ROGER ASCHAM. IJ

be taught in England. The doctrines of Luther had
already filled all the nations of the Romish communion
with controversy and dissension. New studies of lit-
erature, and new tenets of religion, found employment
for all who were desirous of truth, or ambitious of
fame. Learning was at that time prosecuted with that
eagerness and perseverance which in this age of indif-
ference and dissipation it is not easy to conceive. To-
teach or to learn, was at once the business and the
pleasure of the academical life ; and an emulation of
study was raised by Cheke and Smith, to which even
the present age, perhaps, owes many advantages, with-
out remembering or knowing its benefactors.

Ascham soon resolved to unite himself to those who
were enlarging the bounds of knowledge, and, im-
mediately upon his admission into the college, applied
himself to the study of Greek. Those who were zeal-
ous for the new learning, were often no great friends
to the old religion ; and Ascham, as he became a Gre-
cian, became a Protestant. The Reformation was not
yet begun : disaffection to Popery was considered as a
crime justly punished by exclusion from favor and pre-
ferment, and was not yet openly professed, though
superstition was gradually losing its hold upon the
public. The study of Greek was reputable enough,
and Ascham pursued it with diligence and success
equally conspicuous. He thought a language might
be most easily learned by teaching it, and, when he
had obtained some proficiency in Greek, read lectures,
while he was yet a boy, to other boys, who were desir-

14 ROGER ASCHAM.

• ous of instruction. His industry was much encouraged
by Pember, a man of great eminence at that time ;
though I know not that he has left any monuments
behind him, but what the gratitude of his friends and
•scholars has bestowed. He was one of the great en-
courage rs of Greek learning, and particularly applaud-
ed Ascham's lectures, assuring him, in a letter, of
which Graunt has preserved an extract, that he would
gain more knowledge by explaining one of ^Esop's
fables to a boy, than by hearing one of Homer's poems
-explained by another.

Ascham took his bachelor's degree in 1534 (Feb.
1 8), in the eighteenth year of his age, — a time df life
at which it is more common now to enter the universi-
ties than to take degrees, but which, according to the
modes of education then in use, had nothing of re-
markable prematurity. On the 23d of March follow-
ing, he was chosen fellow of the college, which election
he considered as a second birth. Dr. Metcalf, the
master of the college, a man, as Ascham tells us,
v" meanly learned himself, but no mean encourager of
learning in others," clandestinely promoted his elec-
tion, though he openly seemed first to oppose it, and
afterwards to censure it, because Ascham was known
to favor the new opinions ; and the master himself
was accused of giving an unjust preference to the
Northern men, one of the factions into which this
nation was divided, before we could find any more
important reason of dissension, than that some were
born on the northern and some on the southern side

ROGER ASCHAM. 15

of Trent. Any cause is sufficient for a quarrel ; and
the zealots of the north and south lived long in such
animosity, that it was thought necessary at Oxford to
keep them quiet by choosing one proctor every year
from each.

He seems to have been hitherto supported by the
bounty of Wingfield, which his attainment of a fellow-
ship now freed him from the necessity of receiving.
Dependence, though in those days it was more com-
mon, and less irksome, than in the present state of
things, qan never have been free from discontent ; and
therefore he that was released from it must always have
rejoked. The danger is, lest the joy of escaping from
the patron may not leave sufficient memory of the
benefactor. Of this forgetfulness, Ascham cannot be
accused ; for he is recorded to have preserved the most
grateful and affectionate reverence for Wingfield, and
to have never grown weary of recounting his benefits.

His reputation still increased, and many resorted to
his chamber to hear the Greek writers explained. He
was likewise eminent for other accomplishments. By
the advice of Pember, he had learned to play oh musi-
cal instruments ; and he was one of the few who ex-
celled in the mechanical art of writing, which then
began to be cultivated among us, and in which we now
surpass all other nations. He not only wrote his pages
with neatness, but embellished them with elegant
draughts and illuminations, — an art at that time so
highly valued, that it contributed much, both to his
fame and his fortune.

OF

oar

1 6 ROGER ASCHAM.

He became Master of Arts in March, 1537, in his
twenty-first year, and then, if not before, commenced
tutor, and publicly undertook the education of young
men. A tutor of one and twenty, however accom-
plished with learning, however exalted by genius, would
now gain little reverence or obedience ; but in those
days of discipline and regularity, the authority of the
statutes easily supplied that of the teacher ; all power
that was lawful was reverenced. Besides, young tutors
had still younger pupils.

Ascham is said to have courted his scholars to study
by every incitement, to have treated them with great
kindness, and to have taken care at once to instil learn-
ing and piety, to enlighten their minds, and to form
their manners. Many of his scholars rose to great
eminence ; and among them William Grindal was so
much distinguished, that, by Cheke's recommendation,
he was called to court as a proper master of languages
for the Lady Elizabeth.

There was yet no established lecturer of Greek:
the university therefore appointed Ascham to read in
the open schools, and paid him out of the public purse
.an honorary stipend, such as was then reckoned suffi-
ciently liberal. A lecture was afterwards founded by
King Henry; and he then quitted the schools, but
continued to explain Greek authors in his own college.

He was at first an opponent of the new pronuncia-
tion introduced, or rather of the ancient restored, about
this time by Cheke and Smith, and made some cau-
tious struggles for the common practice, which the

ROGER ASCHAM. I/

credit and dignity of his antagonists did not permit
him to defend very publicly, or with much vehemence :
nor were they long his antagonists ; for either his affec-
tion for their merit, or his conviction of the cogency
of their arguments, soon changed his opinion and his
practice, and he adhered ever after to their method of
utterance.

Of this controversy it is not necessary to give a cir-
cumstantial account ; something of it may be found ia
Strype's "Life of Smith," and something in Baker's
" Reflections upon Learning : " it is sufficient to re-
mark here, that Cheke's pronunciation was that which
now prevails in the schools of England. Disquisitions
not only verbal, but merely literal, are too minute for
popular narration.

He was not less eminent as a writer of Latin, than,
as a teacher of Greek. All the public letters of the
university were of his composition ; and as little quali-
fications must often bring great abilities into notice, he
was recommended to this honorable employment, not
less by the neatness of his hand, than the elegance of
his style.

However great was his learning, he was not always
immured in his chamber, but being valetudinary, and
weak of body, thought it necessary to spend many
hours in such exercises as might best relieve him after
the fatigue of study. His favorite amusement was
archery, in which he spent, or, in the opinion of others,
lost, so much time, that those whom either his faults
or virtues made his enemies, and perhaps some whose

1 8 ROGER ASCHAM.

kindness wished him always worthily employed, did
not scruple to censure his practice, as unsuitable to
a man professing learning, and perhaps of bad exam-
ple in a place of education.

To free himself from this censure was one of the
reasons for which he published, in 1544, his "Tox-
ophilus, or the Schole or Partitions of Shooting," in
which he joins the praise with the precepts of archery.
He designed not only to teach the art of shooting, but
to give an example of diction more natural and more
truly English than was used by the common writers
of that age, whom he censures for mingling exotic
terms with their native language, and of whom he
complains that they were made authors, not by skill
or education, but by arrogance and temerity.

He has not failed in either of his purposes. He
has sufficiently vindicated archery as an innocent, salu-
tary, useful, and liberal diversion ; and if his precepts
are of no great use, he has only shown, by one exam-
ple among many, how little the hand can derive from
the mind, how little intelligence can conduce to dex-
terity. In every art, practice is much : in arts manual,
practice is almost the whole. Precept can at most
but warn against error : it can never bestow excellence.

The bow has been so long disused, that most Eng-
lish readers have forgotten its importance, though it
was the weapon by which we gained the battle of
Agincourt, — a weapon which, when handled by English
yeomen, no foreign troops were able to resist. We
were not only abler of body than the French, and

ROGER ASCHAM. IQ

therefore superior in the use of arms, which are forci-
ble only in proportion to the strength with which they
are handled, but the national practice of shooting for
pleasure or for prizes, by which every man was inured
to archery from his infancy, gave us insuperable ad-
vantage, the bow requiring more practice to skilful use
than any other instrument of offence.

Fire-arms were then in their infancy ; and though
battering-pieces had been some time in use, I know
not whether any soldiers were armed with hand-guns
when the "Toxophilus" was first published. They
were soon after used by the Spanish troops, whom
other nations made haste to imitate ; but how little
they could yet effect will be understood from the ac-
count given by the ingenious author of the " Exercise
for the Norfolk Militia."

" The first muskets were very heavy, and could not be fired
without a rest: they had matchlocks, and barrels of a wide
bore, that carried a large ball and charge of powder, and did
execution at a greater distance.

" The musketeers on a march carried only their rests and
ammunition, and had boys to bear their muskets after them,
for which they were allowed great additional pay.

" They were very slow in loading, not only by reason of the
unwieldiness of the pieces, and because they carried the powder
and balls separate, but from the time it took to prepare and
adjust the match ; so that their fire was not near so brisk as
ours is now. Afterwards a lighter kind of matchlock musket
came into use : and they carried their ammunition in bandeliers,
which were broad belts that came over the shoulder, to which
were hung several little cases of wood covered with leather,
each containing a charge of powder; the balls they carried

2O ROGER ASCHAM.

loose in a pouch ; and they had also a priming-horn hanging
by their side.

" The old English writers call those large muskets calivers :
the harquebuze was a lighter piece, that could be fired without
a rest. The matchlock was fired by a match fixed by a kind
of tongs in the serpentine, or cock, which, by pulling the trig-
ger, was brought down with great quickness upon the priming
in the pan, over which there was a sliding cover, which was
drawn back by the hand just at the time of firing. There was
a great deal of nicety and care required to fit the match prop-
erly to the cock, so as to come down exactly true on the priming,
to blow the ashes from the coal, and to guard the pan from
the sparks that fell from it. A great deal of time was also lost
in taking it out of the cock, and returning it between the fin-
gers of the left hand every time that the piece was fired ; and
wet weather often rendered the matches useless."

While this was the state of fire-arms, — and this state
continued among us to the civil war with very little
improvement, — it is no wonder that the long-bow was
preferred by Sir Thomas Smith, who wrote of the
choice of weapons in the reign of Queen Elizabeth,
when the use of the bow still continued, though the
musket was gradually prevailing. Sir John Hayward,
a writer yet later, has, in his history of the Norman
kings, endeavored to evince the superiority of the
archer to the musketeer : however, in the long peace
of King James, the bow was wholly forgotten. Guns
have from that time been the weapons of the English,
as of other nations, and, as they are now improved,
are certainly more efficacious.

Ascham had yet another reason, if not for writing
his book, at least for presenting it to King Henry.

ROGER ASCHAM. 21

England was not then what it may be now justly
termed, the capital of literature ; and therefore, those
who aspired to superior degrees of excellence thought
it necessary to travel into other countries. The purse
of Ascham was not equal to the expense of peregrina-
tion, and therefore he hoped to have it augmented by a
pension. Nor was he wholly disappointed, for the king
rewarded him with a yearly payment of ten pounds.

A pension of ten pounds, granted by a king of Eng-
land to a man of letters, appears to modern readers so
contemptible a benefaction, that it is not unworthy
of inquiry what might be its value at that time, and
how much Ascham might be enriched by it. Nothing
is more uncertain than the estimation of wealth by
denominated money ; the precious metals never retain
long the same proportion to real commodities, and
the same names in different ages do not imply the
same quantity of metal ; so that it is equally difficult
to know how much money was contained in any nomi-
nal sum, and to find what any supposed quantity of
gold or silver would purchase, both which are neces-
sary to the commensuration of money, or the adjust-
ment of proportion between the same sums at different
periods of time.

A numeral pound in King Henry's time contained,
as now, twenty shillings ; and therefore it must be in-
quired what twenty shillings . could perform. Bread-
corn is the most certain standard of the necessaries of
life. Wheat was generally sold at that time for one
shilling the bushel : if, therefore, we take five shillings

22 ROGER ASCHAM.

the bushel for the current price, ten pounds were
equivalent to fifty. But here is danger of a fallacy.
It may be doubted whether wheat was the general
bread- corn of that age ; and if rye, barley, or oats
were the common food, and wheat, as I suspect, only
a delicacy, the value of wheat will not regulate the
price of other things. This doubt, however, is in favor
of Ascham ; for, if we raise the worth of wheat, we
raise that of his pension.

But the value of money has another variation, which
we are still less able to ascertain : the rules of custom,
or the different needs of artificial life, make that reve-
nue little at one time which is great at another. Men
are rich and poor, not only in proportion to what they
have, but to what they want. In some ages, not only
necessaries are cheaper, but fewer things are necessary.
In the age of Ascham, most of the elegances and ex-
penses of our present fashions were unknown ; com-
merce had not yet distributed superfluity through the
lower classes of the people ; and the character of a
student implied frugality, and required no splendor to
support it. His pension, therefore, reckoning together
the wants which he could supply, and the wants from
which he was exempt, may be estimated, in my opin-
ion, at more than a hundred pounds a year, which,
added to the income of his fellowship, put him far
enough above distress.

This was a year of good fortune to Ascham. He
was chosen orator to the university on the removal of
Sir John Cheke to court, where he was made tutor

ROGER ASCHAM. 2$

to Prince Edward. A man once distinguished soon
gains admirers. Ascham was now received to notice
by many of the nobility, and by great ladies, among
whom it was then the fashion to study the ancient
languages. Lee, archbishop of York, allowed him a
yearly pension : how much, we are not told. He was
probably about this time employed in teaching many
illustrious persons to write a fine hand, and among
others, Henry and Charles, dukes of Suffolk, the Prin-
cess Elizabeth, and Prince Edward.

Henry VIII. died two years after ; and a reforma-
tion of religion being now openly prosecuted by King
Edward and his council, Ascham, who was known to
favor it, had a new grant of his pension, and continued
at Cambridge, where he lived in great familiarity with
Bucer, who had been called from Germany to the pro-
fessorship of divinity. But his retirement was soon at
an end; for in 1548, his pupil Grindal, the master of
the Princess Elizabeth, died ; and the princess, who
had already some acquaintance with Ascham, called
him from his college to direct her studies. He obeyed
the summons, as we may easily believe, with readiness,
and for two years instructed her with great diligence ;
but then, being disgusted either at her or her domes-
tics, perhaps eager for another change of life, he left
her without her consent, and returned to the university.
Of this precipitation he long repented ; and, as those
who are not accustomed to disrespect cannot easily
forgive it, he probably felt the effects of his imprudence
to his death.

24 ROGER ASCHAM.

After having visited Cambridge, he took a journey
into Yorkshire, to see his native place and his old
acquaintance, and there received a letter from the
court, informing him that he was appointed secretary
to Sir Richard Morisine, who was to be despatched
as ambassador into Germany. In his return to Lon-
don, he paid that memorable visit to Lady Jane Grey,
in which he found her reading the " Phsedo," in Greek,
as he has related in his "Schole Master."

In September, 1550, he attended Morisine to Ger-
many, and wandered over great part of the country,
making observations upon all that appeared worthy of
his curiosity, and contracting acquaintance with men
of learning. To his correspondent Sturmius he paid a
visit ; but Sturmius was not at home, and those two
illustrious friends never saw each other. During the
course of this embassy, Ascham undertook to improve
Morisine in Greek, and, for four days in the week, ex-
plained some passages in Herodotus every morning,
and more than two hundred verses of Sophocles or
Euripides every afternoon. He read with him likewise
some of the orations of Demosthenes. On the other
days he compiled the letters of business, and in the
night filled up his diary, digested his remarks, and
wrote private letters to his friends in England, and par-
ticularly to those of his college, whom he continually
exhorted to perseverance in study. Amidst all the
pleasures of novelty which his travels supplied, and in
the dignity of his public station, he preferred the tran-
quillity of private study and the quiet of academical

ROGER ASCHAM. 2$

retirement. The reasonableness of this choice has
been always disputed ; and in the contrariety of human
interests and dispositions, the controversy will not
easily be decided.

He made a short excursion into Italy, and mentions
in his "Schole Master," with great severity, the vices
of Venice. He was desirous of visiting Trent while
the council were sitting, but the scantiness of his purse
defeated his curiosity.

In this journey he wrote his " Report and Discourse
of the Affairs in Germany," in which he describes the
dispositions and interests of the German princes like
a man inquisitive and judicious, and recounts many
particularities which are lost in the mass of general
history, in a style which to the ears of that age was
undoubtedly mellifluous, and which is now a very val-
uable specimen of genuine English.

By the death of King Edward in 1553, the Reforma-
tion was stopped, Morisine was recalled, and Ascham's
pension and hopes were at an end. He therefore
retired to his fellowship in a state of disappointment
and despair, which his biographer has endeavored to
express in the deepest strain of plaintive declamation.
" He was deprived of all his support," says Graunt,
" stripped of his pension, and cut off from the assist-
ance of his friends, who had now lost their influence ;
so that he had nee pramia nee prczdia, neither pension
nor estate to support him at Cambridge." There is
no credit due to a rhetorician's account, either of good
or evil. The truth is, that Ascham still had in his

26 ROGER ASCHAM.

fellowship all that in the early part of his life had given
him plenty, and might have lived like the other inhab-
itants of the college, with the advantage of more
knowledge and higher reputation. But, notwithstand-
ing his love of academical retirement, he had now too
long enjoyed the pleasures and festivities of public
life, to return with a good will to academical poverty.

He had, however, better fortune than he expected,
and, if he lamented his condition like the historian,
better than he deserved. He had, during his absence
in Germany, been appointed Latin secretary to King
Edward ; and by the interest of Gardiner, Bishop of
Winchester, he was instated in the same office under
Philip and Mary, with a salary of twenty pounds a
year.

Soon after his admission to his new employment, he
gave an extraordinary specimen of his abilities and dili-
gence, by composing and transcribing with his usual
elegance, in three days, forty-seven letters to princes
and personages, of whom cardinals were the lowest.

How Ascham, who was known to be a Protestant,
could preserve the favor of Gardiner, and hold a place
of honor and profit in Queen Mary's court, it must be
very natural to inquire. Cheke, as is well known, was
compelled to a recantation; and why Ascham was
spared, cannot now be discovered. Graunt, at the
time when the transactions of Queen Mary's reign
must have been well enough remembered, declares
that Ascham always made open profession of the re-
formed religion, and that Englesfield and others often

ROGER ASCHAM. 2J

endeavored to incite Gardiner against him, but found,
their accusations rejected with contempt ; yet he al-
lows that suspicions, and charges of temporization
and compliance, had somewhat sullied his reputation.
The author of the Biographia Britannica conjectures
that he owed his safety to his innocence and useful-
ness ; that it would have been unpopular to attack a ,
man so little liable to censure, and that the loss of his
pen could not have been easily supplied. But the
truth is, that morality was never suffered in the days
of persecution to protect heresy ; nor are we sure that .
Ascham was more clear from common failings than
those who suffered more ; and, whatever might be his
abilities, they were not so necessary but Gardiner could
have easily rilled his place with another secretary.
Nothing is more vain, than at a distant time to exam-
ine the motives of discrimination and partiality; for
the inquirer, having considered interest and policy, is
obliged at last to admit more frequent and more active
motives of human conduct, caprice, accident, and pri-
vate affections.

At that time, if some were punished, many were
forborne ; and of many, why should not Ascham hap-
pen to be one? He seems to have been calm and
prudent, and content with that peace which he was
suffered to enjoy, a mode of behavior that seldom fails
to produce security. He had been abroad in the last
years of King Edward, and had at least given no re-
cent offence. He was certainly, according to his own
opinion, not much in danger; for in the next year

28 ROGER ASCHAM.

he resigned his fellowship, which by Gardiner's favor
he had continued to hold, though not resident, and
married Margaret Howe, a young gentlewoman of a
good family.

He was distinguished in this reign by the notice of
Cardinal Pole, a man of great candor, learning, and
gentleness of manners, and particularly eminent for his
skill in Latin, who thought highly of Ascham's style ;
of which it is no inconsiderable proof, that when Pole
was desirous of communicating a speech made by him-
self as legate in parliament to the Pope, he employed
Ascham to translate it.

He is said to have been not only protected by the
officers of state, but favored and countenanced by
the queen herself, so that he had no reason of com-
plaint in that reign of turbulence and persecution;
nor was his fortune much mended, when, in 1558, his
pupil Elizabeth mounted the throne. He was contin-
ued in his former employment with the same stipend ;
but though he was daily admitted to the presence of
the queen, assisted her private studies, and partook
of her diversions ; sometimes read to her in the learned
languages, and sometimes played with her at draughts
and chess, — he added nothing to his twenty pounds
a year but the prebend of Westwang, in the church of
York, which was given him the year following. His
fortune was therefore not proportionate to the rank
which his offices and reputation gave him, or to the
favor in which he seemed to stand with his mistress.
Of this parsimonious allotment, it is again a hopeless

ROGER ASCHAM. 29

search to inquire the reason. The queen was not
naturally bountiful, and perhaps did not think it ne-
cessary to distinguish by any prodigality of kindness a
man who had formerly deserted her, and whom she
might still suspect of serving rather for interest than
affection. Graunt exerts his rhetorical powers in praise
of Ascham's disinterestedness and contempt of money,
and declares, that, though he was often reproached by
his friends with neglect of his own interest, he never
would ask any thing, and inflexibly refused all presents
which his office or imagined interest induced any to
offer him. Cambden, however, imputes the narrowness
of his condition to his love of dice and cock-fights ^
and Graunt, forgetting himself, allows that Ascham
was sometimes thrown into agonies by disappointed
expectations. It may be easily discovered from his
" Scholemaster," that he felt his wants, though he
might neglect to supply them ; and we are left to sus-
pect that he showed his contempt of money, only by
losing at play. If this was his practice, we may excuse
Elizabeth, who knew the domestic character of her
servants, if she did not give much to him who was
lavish of a little.

However he might fail in his economy, it were in-
decent to treat with wanton levity the memory of a
man who shared his frailties with all, but whose learn-
ing or virtues few can attain, and by whose excellences
many may be improved, while himself only suffered
by his faults.

In the reign of Elizabeth, nothing remarkable is

30 ROGER ASCHAM.

:known to have befallen him except that in 1563 he
was invited by Sir Edward Sackville to write the
"" Scholemaster," a treatise on education, upon an oc-
casion which he relates in the beginning of the book.

This work, though begun with alacrity, in hope of
a considerable reward, was interrupted by the death
of the patron, and afterwards sorrowfully and slowly
finished in the gloom of disappointment, under the
pressure of distress. But of the author's disinclination
or dejection, there can be found no tokens in the work,
which is conceived with great vigor, and finished with
great accuracy, and perhaps contains the best advice
that was ever given for the study of languages.

This treatise he completed, but did not publish;
.for that poverty which in our days drives authors so
hastily in such numbers to the press, in the, time of
Ascham, I believe, debarred them from it. The print-
ers gave little for a copy, and, if we may believe the
tale of Raleigh's history, were not forward to print
what was offered them for nothing. Ascham's book,
therefore, lay unseen in his study, and was at last dedi-
cated to Lord Cecil by his widow.

Ascham never had a robust or vigorous body, and
his excuse for so many hours of diversion was his in-
ability to endure a long continuance of sedentary
thought. In the latter part of his life he found it ne-
cessary to forbear any intense application of the mind
from dinner to bedtime, and rose to read and write
early in the morning. He was for some years hecti-
cally feverish, and, though he found some alleviation

ROGER ASCHAM. 31

of his distemper, never obtained a perfect recovery of
his health. The immediate cause of his last sickness
was too close application to the composition of a
poem, which he proposed to present to the queen on
the day of her accession. To finish this, he forbore
to sleep at his accustomed hours, till in December,
1568, he fell sick of a kind of lingering disease, which
Graunt has not named, nor accurately described. The
most afflictive symptom was want of sleep, which he
endeavored to obtain by the motion of a cradle.
Growing every day weaker, he found it vain to con-
tend with his distemper, and prepared to die with the
resignation and piety of a true Christian. He was
attended on his death-bed by Gravet, vicar of St. Sep-
ulchre, and Dr. Novvel, the learned dean of St. Paul's,
who gave ample testimony to the decency and devo-
tion of his concluding life. He frequently testified his
desire of that dissolution which he soon obtained.
His funeral sermon was preached by Dr. Nowel.

Roger Ascham died in the fifty-third year of his
age, at a time when, according to the general course of
life, much might yet have been expected from him, and
when he might have hoped for much from others : but
his abilities and his wants were at an end together ;
and who can determine whether he was cut off from
advantages, or rescued from calamities? He appears
to have been not much qualified for the improvement
of his fortune. His disposition was kind and social :
he delighted in the pleasures of conversation, and was
probably not much inclined to business. This may

32 . ROGER ASCHAM.

be suspected from the paucity of his writings. He
has left little behind him ; and of that little, nothing
was published by himself but the " Toxophilus " and
the account of Germany. " The Scholemaster " was
printed by his widow ; and the epistles were collected
by Graunt, who dedicated them to Queen Elizabeth,
that he might have an opportunity of recommending
his son, Giles Ascham, to her patronage. The dedica-
tion was not lost : the young man was made, by the
queen's mandate, fellow of a college in Cambridge,
where he obtained considerable reputation. What was
the effect of his widow's dedication to Cecil is not
known : it may be hoped that Ascham's works ob-
tained for his family, after his decease, that support
which he did not in his life very plenteously procure
them.

Whether he was poor by his own fault, or the fault
of others, cannot now be decided; but it is certain
that many have been rich with less merit. His philo-
logical learning would have gained him honor in any
country ; and among us it may justly call for that rev-
erence which all nations owe to those who first rouse
them from ignorance, and kindle among them the light
of literature. Of his manners nothing can be said but
from his own testimony, and that of his contempora-
ries. Those who mention him allow him many virtues.
His courtesy, benevolence, and liberality are cele-
brated ; and of his piety we have not only the testi-
mony of his friends, but the evidence of his writings.

That his English works have been so long neglected,

ROGER ASCHAM. 33

is a proof of the uncertainty of literary fame. He was
scarcely known as an author in his own language till
Mr. Upton published his " Scholemaster " with learned
notes. His other poems were read only by those few
who delight in obsolete books ; but as they are now
collected into one volume, with the addition of some
letters never printed before, the public has an oppor-
tunity of recompensing the injury, and allotting Ascharn
the reputation due to his knowledge and his eloquence.

[Dr. Johnson also wrote a dedication for Bennet's
edition. The chosen patron was a member of the
noble family, whose " names are on the waters " of
South Carolina, His hereditary title has been worth-
ily borne in our own day by the seventh earl of Shaftes-
bury, who died in 1885. This short paper is worth-
copying, for that characteristic touch of Johnson's pen,
— " formed Elizabeth to empire." — C.]

To THE RIGHT HON. ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, EARL OF
SHAFTESBURY, BARON ASHLEY, LORD LIEUTENANT, AND
GUSTOS ROTULORUM OF DORSETSHIRE, F. R. s.

My Lord, — Having endeavoured, by an elegant and useful
edition, to recover the esteem of the public to an author un-
deservedly neglected, the only care which I now owe to his
memory, is that of inscribing his works to a patron whose ac-
knowledged eminence of character may awaken attention and
attract regard.

I have not suffered the zeal of an editor so far to take pos-
session of my mind, as that I should obtrude upon your lord-
ship any productions unsuitable to the dignity of your rank or
of your sentiments. Ascham was not only the chief ornamen*

34 ROGER ASCHAM.

of a celebrated college, but visited foreign countries, frequented
courts, and lived in familiarity with statesmen and princes ;
not only instructed scholars in literature, but formed Elizabeth
to empire.

To propagate the works of such a writer will not be un-
worthy of your lordship's patriotism : for I know not what
greater benefits you can confer on your country, than that of
preserving worthy names from oblivion, by joining them with
your own. I am, my lord, your lordship's most obliged, most
obedient, and most humble servant,

JAMES BENNET.

ROGER ASCHAM. 3$

CHAPTER II.

" The SCHOOLMASTER is a classical production in English, which
may be placed by the side of its great Latin rivals, the Orator of
Cicero and the Institutes of Quintilian." — I. D'!SRAELI.

"THE SCHOLEMASTER."

THIS is a book scarcely two-thirds as large as the
volume which the reader now has in his hand. It is
divided into two nearly equal parts. The first part is
on "The bringing up of youth;" the second on "The
ready way to the Latin tongue." The work is avowedly
based upon a passage of Cicero (De Oratore, Book I.
chap, xxxiv.), which has been thus translated : —

" But in my daily exercises, I used, when a youth, to adopt
chiefly that method which I knew that Caius Carbo, my adver-
sary, generally practised, which was, that having selected some
nervous piece of poetry, or read over such a portion of a
speech as I could retain in my memory, I used to declaim
upon what I had been reading in other words, chosen with all
the judgment that I possessed. . . . Afterwards I thought
proper, and continued the practice at a rather more advanced
age, to translate the orations of the best Greek orators; by
fixing upon which, I gained this advantage, that while I ren-
dered into Latin what I had read in Greek, I not only used the
best words, and yet such as were of common occurrence, but
also formed some words by imitation, which would be new to
our countrymen, taking care, however, that they were unobjec-
tionable."

36 ROGER ASCHAM.

We propose to give a few extracts from the work,
rather to show the author's style than to furnish an
abstract of his views on the best methods of teaching
the languages. Those wishing to learn these, will, of
course, refer to the book. A good edition, in the ori-
ginal spelling, without notes, is published as one of a
series of " English Reprints " — price one shilling, Bir-
mingham, England, 1870. An account of Ascham's
method, compared with later theories and systems,
can be found in " Essays on Educational Reformers,"
by Robert Herbert Quick, Cincinnati, 1879. Under
some form or other, Ascham's suggestions are embod-
ied in every successful attempt to teach a strange lan-
guage, especially to adult pupils. It seems proper
that Ascham should have a little space in the Chau-
tauqua series, as several languages are successfully
taught in the summer schools (Dr. Vincent's " Chau-
tauqua Movement," p. 69).

Our extracts from " The Scholemaster " will be given
in modern spelling, as more convenient to general
readers. The " Preface to the Reader " gives at length
the reasons that led the author to write his little book.
Both for manner and matter, it seems worthy of being
copied in full. The titlepage is given, as nearly as
possible, in the original style and spelling.

An edition of "The Whole Works of Roger As-
cham" was published in London, 1865, by Dr. Giles
of Oxford.

THE

SCHOLEMASTER

Or plaine andperfite way of tea-
chyng children Jo vnderftand, write, and

fpeake, in Latin tong, but fpecially purpofed
for the priuate brynging vp of youth in lentle-
men and Noble mens houfes, and commodious
alfo for all fuck, as haue forgot the Latin
tonge, and would, by themfelues, with-
out a Scholemaster, in fhort tyme,
and with f mall paines, recouera
fufficient habilite, to vnder-
• stand, write, and

fpeake Latin.

%

^[ By Roger Afcham.

f An. 1570.
A T LONDON.

Printed by lohn Daye, dwelling
ouer Alderfgate.

IT Cum Gratia et Priuilegio Regies Maieftatis,
per Decennium.

"PREFACE TO THE READER.

" WHEN the great plague was at London, the year 1 563,
the Queen's Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, lay at her Castle
of Windsor ; where upon the tenth day of December, it
fortuned, that in Sir William Cecil's chamber, her High-
ness's principal Secretary, there dined together these
personages, M. Secretary himself, Sir William Peter, Sir
J. Mason, D. Wotton, Sir Richard Sackville, Treasurer
of the Exchequer, Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of
Exchequer, M. Haddon, Master of Requests, M. John
Astely, Master of the Jewel House, M. Bernard Hampton,
M. Nicasius, and I.

" Of which number, the most part were of her Majesty's
most honorable Privy Council, and the rest serving her
in very good place. I was glad then, and do rejoice yet
to remember, that my chance was so happy to be there
that day, in the company of so many wise and good men
together, as hardly then could have been picked out again,
out of all England besides.

" M. Secretary hath this accustomed manner; though
his head be never so full of most weighty affairs of the
realm, yet at dinner time he doth seem to lay them always
aside ; and fmdeth ever fit occasion to talk pleasantly of
other matters, but most gladly of some matter of learning,

38

ROGER ASCHAM. 39

wherein he will courteously hear the mind of the meanest
at his table.

" Not long after our sitting down, ' I have strange news
brought me,' saith M. Secretary, ' this morning, that
divers scholars of Eaton run away from the school for
fear of a beating.' Whereupon M. Secretary took occa-
sion to wish, that some more discretion were in many
schoolmasters, in using correction, than commonly there
is ; who many times punish rather the weakness of nature,
than the fault of the scholar; whereby many scholars,
that might else prove well, be driven to hate learning
before they know what learning meaneth ; and so are
made willing to forsake their books, and be glad to be
put to any other kind of living. M. Peter, as one some-
what severe of nature, said plainly, that the rod only was
the sword, that must keep the school in obedience, and
the scholar in good order. Mr. Wotton, a man mild of
nature, with soft voice and few words, inclined to M.
Secretary's judgment, and said, ' In mine opinion the
schoolhouse should be indeed as it is called by name,
the house of play and pleasure, and not of fear and
bondage; and as I do remember, so saith Socrates in
one place of Plato. And therefore if a rod carry the fear
of a sword, it is no marvel if those that be fearful of
nature, choose rather to forsake the play, than to stand
always within the fear of a sword in a fond \JbolisK\
man's handling.'

" M. Mason, after his manner, was very merry with both
parties, pleasantly playing both with the shrewd touches
of many curst boys, and with the small discretion of
many lewd schoolmasters.

" M. Haddon was fully of M. Peter's opinion, and said,
that the best schoolmaster of our time was the greatest

4O ROGER ASCHAM.

beater, and named the person. ' Though,' quoth I, ' it
was his good fortune, to send from his school into the
University one of the best scholars indeed of all our
time, yet wise men do think, that that came to pass,
rather by the great towardness of the scholar, than by
the great beating of the master ; and whether this be true
or no, you yourself are best witness.' I said somewhat
further in the matter, how, and why, young children were
sooner allured by love than driven by beating, to attain
good learning; wherein I was bolder to say my mind,
because M. Secretary courteously provoked me there-
unto ; or else in such a company and surely in his pres-
ence, my wont is to be more willing to use mine ears,
than to occupy my tongue.

"Sir Walter Mildmay, M. Astley, and the rest, said
very little ; only Sir Richard Sackville said nothing at all.
After dinner I went up to read with the Queen's Majesty.
We read then together in the Greek tongue, as I well
remember, that noble oration of Demosthenes against
y^Eschines, for his false dealing in his embassage to King
Philip of Macadonie. Sir Richard Sackville came up
soon after, and finding me in her Majesty's privy cham-
ber, he took me by the hand, and carrying me to the
window said : ' M. Ascham, I would not for a good deal
of money have been this day absent from dinner ; where,
though I said nothing, yet I gave as good ear, and do
consider as well the talk that passed, as any one did there.
M. Secretary said very wisely, and most truly, that many
young wits be driven to hate learning, before they know
what learning is. , I can be good witness to this myself;
for a fond (foolish} schoolmaster, before I was fully four-
teen years old, drave me so with fear of beating from all
love of learning, that now, when I know what difference

ROGER ASCHAM. 4!

it is, to have learning, and to have little, or none at all,
I feel it my greatest grief, and find it my greatest hurt
that ever came to me, that it was my so ill chance, to
light upon so lewd a schoolmaster. But feeling it is but
in vain to lament things past, and also wisdom to look to
things to come, surely, God willing, if God lend me life,
I will make this my mishap some occasion of good hap
to little Robert Sackville my son's son. For whose bring-
ing up, I would gladly, if it so please you, use specially
your good advice. I hear say you have a son much of
his age ; we will deal thus together : point you out a
schoolmaster, who by your order shall teach my son and
yours, and for all the rest, I will provide, yea though they
three do cost me a couple of hundred pounds by year ;
and besides, you shall find me as fast a friend to you and
yours, as perchance any you have.' Which promise the
worthy gentleman surely kept with me until his dying
day. We had then farther talk together of bringing-up
of children, of the nature of quick and hard wits, of the
right choice of a good wit, of fear, and love and teaching
children. We passed from children and came to young
men, namely gentlemen : we talked of their too much
liberty to live as they lust ; of their letting loose too
soon to over much experience of ill, contrary to the good
order of many good old Commonwealths of the Persians,
and Greeks; of wit gathered, and good fortune gotten
by some, only by experience without learning. And,
lastly, he required of me very earnestly to show what I
thought of the common going of English men into Italy.
" 'But, ' saith he, ' because this place and this time will
not suffer so long talk as these good matters require,
therefore I pray you, at my request, and at your leisure,
put in some order of writing the chief points of this our

42 ROGER ASCHAM.

talk, concerning the right order of teaching, and honesty
of living, for the good bringing-up of children and young
men; and surely beside contenting me, you shall both
please and profit very many others.' I made some
excuse by lack of ability, and weakness of body. ' Well,'
saith he, 1 1 am not now to learn what you can do ; our
dear friend, good M. Goodricke, whose judgment I could
well believe, did once for all satisfy me fully therein.
Again, I heard you say, not long ago, that you may thank
Sir John Cheke for all the learning you have ; and I know
very well myself, that you did teach the Queen. And
therefore, seeing God did bless you, to make you the
scholar of the best master, and also the schoolmaster of
the best scholar, that ever were in our time, surely, you
should please God, benefit your country, and honest your
own name, if you would take the pains to impart to others
what you learned of such a master, and how you taught
such a scholar. And in uttering the stuff ye received of
the one, in declaring the order ye took with the other, ye
shall never lack neither matter, nor manner, what to write
nor how to write in this kind of argument.*

" I beginning some further excuse, suddenly was called
to come to the Queen. The night following I slept little ;
my head was so full of this our former talk, and I so
mindful somewhat to satisfy the honest request of so dear
a friend. I thought to prepare some little treatise for a
New Year's gift that Christmas ; but, as it chanceth to
busy builders, so, in building this my poor schoolhouse
(the rather because the form of it is somewhat new, and
differing from others), the work rose daily higher and
wider than I thought it would at the beginning. And
though it appear now, and be in very deed, but a small
cottage, poor for the stuff, and rude for the workman-

ROGER ASCHAM. 43 :

ship ; yet in going forward I found the site so good, as I
was loath to give it over; but the making so costly, out-
reaching my ability, as many times I wished that some
one of those three, my dear friends, with full purses, Sir
Tho. Smith, M. Haddon, or M. Watson had had the
doing of it. Yet nevertheless, I myself spending gladly
that little, that I gat at home by good Sir John Cheke,
and that I borrowed abroad of my friend Sturmius, beside
somewhat that was left me in reversion, by my old Mas-
ters, Plato, Aristotle and Cicero, I have at last patched it
up, as I could, and as you see. If the matter be mean, and
meanly handled, I pray you bear both with me, and it ; for
never work went up in worse weather, with more lets and
stops, than this poor schoolhouse of mine. Westminster-
Hall can bear some witness, beside much weakness of
body, but more trouble of mind, by some such sores, as
grieved me to touch them myself ; and therefore I purpose
not to open them to others. And in the midst of outward
injuries and inward cares, to increase them withal, good
Sir Richard Sackville dieth, that worthy gentleman ; * That
earnest favorer and furtherer of God's true Religion ; that
faithful servitor to his prince and country; a lover of
learning, and all learned men ; wise in all doings ; courte-
ous to all persons, showing spite to none, doing good to
many ; and as I well found, to me so fast a friend, as I
never lost the like before.' When he was gone, my heart
was dead ; there was not one that wore a black gown for
him, who carried a heavier heart for him than I ; when he
was gone, I cast this book away ; I could not look upon
it, but with weeping eyes, in remembering him, who was
the only setter on, to do it ; and would have been not
only a glad commender of it, but also a sure and certain
comfort to me and mine for it.

44 ROGER ASCHAM.

" Almost two years together, this book lay scattered
and neglected, and had been quite given over of me, if
the goodness of one had not given me some life and spirit
again. God, the mover of goodness, prosper always him
and his, as he hath many times comforted me and mine,
and, I trust to God, shall comfort more and more. Of
whom most justly I may say, and very oft, and always
gladly I am wont to say, that sweet verse of Sophocles,
spoken by CEdipus to worthy Theseus, * For whatsoever
I have, I have through thee, and through none other of
living men.'

" This hope hath helped me to end this book ; which if
he allow, I shall think my labors well employed, and shall
not much esteem the mislikings of any others. And I
trust he shall think the better of it because he shall find
the best part thereof to come out of his school whom
Tie of all men loved and liked best. Yet some men,
friendly enough of nature, but of small judgment in learn-
ing, do think I take too much pains, and spend too much
time, in setting forth these children's affairs. But those
good men were never brought up in Socrates' school,
who saith plainly < that no man goeth about a more godly
purpose, than he that is mindful of the good bringing-up
both of his own and other men's children.' Therefore I
trust, good and wise men will think well of this my doing.
And of others, that think otherwise, I will think myself,
they are but men, to be pardoned for their folly, and
pitied for their ignorance.

" In writing this book, I have had earnest respect to
three special points, — truth of religion, honesty in living,
right order in learning. In which three ways, I pray God,
my poor children may diligently walk ; for whose sake, as
-nature moved, and reason required, and necessity also

ROGER ASCHAM. 45

somewhat compelled, I was the willinger to take these
pains. For seeing at my death, I am not like to leave
them any great store of living, therefore in my lifetime, I
thought good to bequeath unto them, in this little book,
as in my will and testament, the right way to good learn-
ing : which if they follow, with the fear of God, they shall
very well come to sufficiency of living. I wish also, with
all my heart, that young Mr. Robert Sackville may take
that fruit of this labor, that his worthy grandfather pur-
posed he should have done ; and if any other do take
either profit or pleasure hereby, they have cause to thank
Mr. Robert Sackville, for whom specially this my school-
master was provided. And one thing I would have the
reader consider in reading this book, that because no
schoolmaster hath charge of any child, before he enter
into his school ; therefore I leaving all former care, of
their v<good bringing up, to wise and good parents, as a
matter not belonging to the schoolmaster, I do appoint
this my schoolmaster then, and there to begin, where his
office and charge beginneth. Which charge lasteth not
long, but until the scholar be made able to go to the Uni-
versity, to proceed in logic, rhetoric, and other kinds of
learning. Yet if my schoolmaster, for love he beareth ta
his scholar, shall teach him somewhat for his furtherance,,
and better judgment in learning, that may serve him seven
years after in the University, he doth his scholar no more
wrong, nor deserveth no worse name thereby, than he
doth in London, who selling silk, or cloth, unto his friend,,
doth give him better measure than either his promise or
bargain was.

" Farewell in Christ."

EXTRACTS FROM "THE SCHOLE-
MASTER."

" WITH the common use of teaching and beating in
• common schools of England, I will not greatly contend ;
which if I did, it were but a small grammatical contro-
versy, neither belonging to heresy nor treason, nor greatly
touching God nor the Prince ; although in very deed, in
the end, the good or ill bringing up of children, doth as
much serve to the good or ill service of God, our Prince,
and our whole country, as any one thing doth beside.

" I do gladly agree with all good Schoolmasters in these
points ; to have children brought to good perfectness in
learning; to all honesty in manners; to have all faults
rightly amended; to have every vice severally corrected :
but for the order and way that leadeth rightly to these
points, we somewhat differ. For commonly, many school-
masters, some, as I have seen, more, as I have heard tell,
be of so crooked a nature, as, when they meet with a hard-
witted scholar, they rather break him than bow him,
rather mar him than mend him. For when the school-
master is angry with some other matter, then will he
soonest fall to beat his scholar ; and though he himself
should be punished for his folly, yet must he beat some

46

ROGER ASCHAM. 47

scholar for his pleasure, though there be no cause for him
to do so, nor yet fault in the scholar to deserve so." . . .
"And one example, whether love or fear doth work
more in a child for virtue and learning, I will gladly re-
port, which may be heard with some pleasure, and fol-
lowed with more profit. Before I went into Germany, I
came to Brodegate in Leicestershire, to take my leave of
that noble Lady Jane Grey, to whom I was exceeding
much beholden. Her parents, the Duke and Duchess,
with all the household, Gentlemen and Gentlewomen,
were hunting in the Park. I found her in her chamber
reading Phcedon Platonis in Greek, and that with as much
delight as some gentlemen would read a merry tale in
Bocacio. After salutation, and duty done, with some
other talk, I asked her why she would leave such pastime
in the Park ? Smiling, she answered me : ' I wist, all
their sport in the Park is but a shadow to that pleas-
ure that I find in Plato. Alas, good folk, they never
felt what true pleasure meant.' * And how came you,
Madame,' quoth I, ' to this deep knowledge of pleasure,
and what did chiefly allure you unto it ; seeing, not many
women, but very few men have attained thereunto ? ' 'I
will tell you,' quoth she, 'and tell you a truth, which
perchance ye will marvel at. One of the greatest bene-
fits that ever God gave me, is that he sent me so sharp
and severe Parents, and so gentle a schoolmaster. For
when I am in presence of either father or mother, whether
I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be
merry, or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing any
thing else, I must do it, as it were, in full weight, meas-
ure, and number, even so perfectly as God made the
world, or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threat-
ened, yea, presently sometimes with pinches, nippes, and

48 ROGER ASCHAM.

bobbes, and other ways, which I will not name, for the
honor I bear them, so without measure, misordered that
I think myself in hell, till time come that I must go to
M. Elmer, who teacheth me so gently, so pleasantly, with
such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the time
nothing while I am with him. And when I am called
from him, I fall on weeping, because whatsoever I do
else but learning, is full of grief, trouble, fear, and wholly
misliking unto me. And thus my book hath been so
much my pleasure, and bringeth daily to me more pleas-
ure and more, that in respect of it, all other pleasures, in
very deed, be but trifles and troubles unto me/ I remem-
"ber this talk gladly, both because it is so worthy of mem-
ory, and because also it was the last talk that ever I had,
and the last time that ever I saw that noble and worthy
lady."

" But I marvel the less, that these misorders be among
some in the Court, for commonly in the country also every-
where, innocency is gone ; Bashfulness is banished ; much
presumption in youth; small authority in age; Reverence
is neglected ; duties be confounded ; and to be short, dis-
obedience doth overflow the banks of good order, almost
in every place, almost in every degree of man."

"This last summer, I was in a gentleman's house,
where a young child, somewhat past four years old, could
in no wise frame his tongue to say a little short grace :
and yet he could roundly rap out so many ugly oaths,
and those of the newest fashion, as some good man of
fourscore years old hath never heard named before ; and
that which was most detestable of all, his father and
mother would laugh at it. I much doubt what comfort,

ROGER ASCHAM. 49

another day, this child shall bring unto them. This Child
using much the company of serving men, and giving good
care to their talk, did easily learn which he shall hardly
forget all the days of his life hereafter: so likewise, in
the Court, if a young Gentleman will venture himself into
the company of Ruffians, it is over great a jeopardy, lest
their fashions, manners, thoughts, talk, and deeds will
very soon be ever like. The confounding of companies
breedeth confusion of good manners both in the Court
and everywhere else."

" These be the enchantments of Circes, brought out of
Italy, to mar men's manners in England ; much, by ex-
ample of ill life, but more by precepts of fond books, of
late translated out of Italian into English, sold in every
shop in London, commended by honest titles the sooner
to corrupt honest manners ; dedicated over boldly to vir-
tuous and honorable personages, the more easily to beguile
simple and innocent wits. It is pity that those which,
have authority and charge to allow and disallow books to
be printed, be no more circumspect herein than they are-
Ten Sermons at Paul's Cross do not so much good for
moving men to true doctrine, as one of those books do-
harm, with enticing men to ill living. Yea I say farther,,
those books tend not so much to corrupt honest living,,
as they do to subvert true Religion."

" I had once a proof hereof, tried by good experience,
by a dear friend of mine, when I came first from Cam-
bridge, to serve the Queen's Majesty, then Lady Eliza-
beth, lying at worthy Sir Ant. Denys in Cheston. John
Whitney, a young gentleman, was my bed-fellow, who
willing by good nature and provoked by mine advice,

50 ROGER ASCHAM.

began to learn the Latin tongue, after the order de-
clared in this book. We began after Christmas : I read
unto him Tullie de Amicitia, which he did every day
twice translate, out of Latin into English, and out of
English into Latin again. About St. Lawrence-tide J after,
to prove how he profited, I did choose out Torquatiis* talk
de Amicitia in the latter end of the first book de fi nib.,
because that place was the same in matter, like in words
and phrases, nigh to the form and fashion of sentences,
as he had learned before in de Amicitia. I did translate
it myself into plain English, and gave it him to turn into
Latin : which he did, so choicely, so orderly, so without
any great miss in the hardest points of Grammar, that
some, in seven years in Grammar Schools, yea, and some
in the Universities too, cannot do half so well. This
worthy young Gentleman, to my greatest grief, to the
great lamentation of that whole house, and specially to
that most noble Lady, now Queen Elizabeth herself, de-
parted within few days, out of this world.

" And if in any cause a man may without offence of God
speak somewhat ungodly, surely, it was some grief unto
me, to see him hie so hastily to God, as he did. A Court
full of such young Gentlemen, were rather a Paradise
than a Court upon earth. And though I had never Poeti-
cal head, to make any verse, in any tongue, yet either love,
or sorrow, or both, did wring out of me then, certain care-
ful thoughts of my good will towards him, which in my
mourning for him, fell forth, more by chance, than either
by skill or use, into this kind of misorderly metre : —

" My own John Whitney, now farewell, now death doth part us twain.
No death, but parting for a while, whom life shall join again.
Therefore my heart, cease sighs and sobs, cease sorrow's seed to sow,
Whereof no gain, but greater grief, and hurtful care may grow.

1 [August 10.]

ROGER ASCHAM. 5 I

Yet, when I think upon such gifts of grace as God him lent,
My loss, his gain, I must awhile, with joyful tears lament.
Young years to yield such fruit in Court, where seed of vice is sown,
Is sometimes read, in some place seen, amongst us seldom known.
His life he led, Christ's lore to learn, with will to work the same :
He read to know, and knew to live, and lived to praise his name.
So fast to friend, so foe to few, so good to every wight,
I may well wish, but scarcely hope, again to have in sight.
The greater joy his life to me, his death the greater pain :
His life in Christ so surely set, doth glad my heart again :
His life so good, his death better, do mingle mirth with care,
My spirit with joy, my flesh with grief, so dear a friend to spare.
Thus God the good, while they be good, doth take and leaves us ill,
That we should mend our sinful life, in life to tarry still.
Thus, we well left, be better reft, in heaven to take his place,
That by like life, and death, at last, we may obtain like grace.
My own John Whitney, again farewell, awhile thus part in twain,
Whom pain doth part in earth, in heaven, great joy shall join again."

" And here, for my pleasure I purpose a little, by the
way, to play and sport with my master Tully, from whom
commonly I am never wont to dissent. He himself, for
this point of learning, in his verses doth halt a little by
his leave. He could not deny it, if he were alive, nor
those defend him now that love him best. This fault I
lay to his charge ; because once it pleased him, though
somewhat merrily, yet over uncourteously, to rail upon
poor England, objecting both extreme beggary and mere
barbarousness unto it, writing thus unto his friend Atti-
cus : * There is not one scruple of silver in that whole
Isle, or any one that knoweth either learning or letter.7

" But now, master Cicero, blessed be God and His son,
Jesus Christ, whom you never knew, except it were as it
pleased him to lighten you by some shadow, as covertly
in one place ye confess saying, * Veritatis tantum urn*

52 ROGER ASCII AM.

bram confectamurj as your master, Plato, did before
you: blessed be God, I say, that sixteen hundred year
after you were dead and gone, it may truly be said, that
for silver there is more comely plate in one city of Eng-
land than is in four of the proudest Cities in all Italy, and
take Rome for one of them. And for learning, beside the
knowledge of all learned tongues and liberal sciences,
even your own books, Cicero, be as well read, and your
excellent eloquence is as well liked and loved, and as
truly followed in England at this day as it is now, or ever
was, since your own time, in any place of Italie, either at
Arpinum, where you were born, or else at Rome, where
ye were brought up. And a little to brag with you, Cicero,
where you yourself, by your leave, halted in some point
of learning in your own tongue ; many in England at this
day go straight up, both in true skill and right doing
therein."

" SALLUST.

" Sallust is a wise and worthy writer, but he requireth
a learned Reader, and a right considerer of him. My dear-
est friend, and best master that ever I had or heard in
learning, Sir J. Cheke, such a man, as if I should live to
see England breed the like again, I fear I should live
over long, did once give me a lesson for Sallust, which I
shall never forget myself, so it is worthy to be remem-
bered of all those that would come to perfect judgment
of the Latin tongue. He said that Sallust was not very
fit for young men to learn out of him the purity of the
Latin tongue, because he was not the purest in propriety
of words, nor choicest in aptness of phrases, nor the best
in framing of sentences ; and therefore is his writing, said
he, neither plain for the matter, nor sensible for men's

ROGER ASCHAM. 53

understanding. 'And what is the cause thereof, sir?'
Quoth I. ' Verily,' said he, 'because in Sallust's writing
is more Art than nature, and more labor than art ; and in
Jiis labor also, too much toil, as it were, with an uncon-
tented care to write better than he could, a fault common
to very many men. And, therefore, he doth not express
the matter lively and naturally with common speech as ye
see Zenophon doth in Greek, but it is carried and driven
forth artificially, after so learned a sort, as Thucydides
doth in his orations.' ' And how cometh it to pass,' said
I, ' that Ctzsar's and Cicero's talk is so natural and plain,
and Sallust's writing so artificial and dark, when all they
three lived in one time ? ' * I will freely tell you my fancy
herein,' said he : ' surely Ccesar and Cicero, beside a sin-
gular prerogative of natural eloquence given unto them
by God, both two, by use of life, were daily orators
among the common people, and greatest counsellors in
the Senate house ; and therefore gave themselves to use
such speech as the meanest should well understand, and
the wisest best allow, following carefully that good counsel
of Aristotle, " loquendum ut multi, sapiendum ut pauci"
Sallust was no such man, neither for will to goodness, nor
skill by learning ; but ill given by nature, and made worse
by bringing up, spent the most part of his youth very
inisorderly in riot and revelling. In the company of such,
who, never giving their mind to honest doing, could never
inure their tongue to wise speaking. But at the last com-
ing to better years, and buying wit at the dearest hand,
that is, by long experience of the hurt and shame that
cometh of mischief, moved by the counsel of them that
were wise, and carried by the example of such as were
good, first fell to honesty of life, and after to the love to
study and learning ; and so became so new a man, that

54 ROGER ASCHAM.

Casar being dictator, made him praetor in Numidia,
where he, absent from his country, and not inured with
the common talk of Rome, but shut up in his study,
and bent wholly to reading, did write the story of the
Romans.' "

MEMOIR

OF

THOMAS ARNOLD

OF RUGBY, ENGLAND,

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO HIS LIFE AND
WORK AS A TEACHER.

SELECTED FROM

LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE,

BY

ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.

(ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LONDON IN 1845.)

WITH AN INTRODUCTION

BY

JAMES H. CARLISLE,

PRESIDENT OF WOFFORD COLLEGE, SPARTANBURG, S.C.

THOMAS ARNOLD.

..." One of the noblest minds and highest characters of
these days — prematurely taken from us, in the middle of a
career of usefulness which we believe we are guilty of no
extravagance in terming unparalleled in the line of life which
Dr. Arnold adopted." — GLADSTONE, January, 1843.

" We never recollect a religious life which so much affected
us; which, while reading, we wished so much to make our
own ; revolving which, we can so little justify ourselves that
it shall not be so." — EDINBURGH REVIEWER, January, 1845.

INTRODUCTION.

ASCHAM, in a letter dated in 1550, laments the ruin
of grammar schools in England, and predicts, "from
their decline, the speedy extinction of the universities."
This sentence may give us a slight connection between
the names of Ascham and Arnold. In 1567, the year
1 before Ascham's death, Laurence Sheriff, a London
grocer, dying, left a small amount of property to found
a grammar school in Rugby, his native town, about
eighty miles north-west of London. This was a small
place (now containing eight thousand inhabitants) in
Warwickshire, an agricultural county. The property
was chiefly in real estate in London, yielding at first
only the value of a few hundred dollars yearly. With
the growth of the city the property improved, until,
in the first part of this century, it annually yielded
more than twenty thousand dollars. The school, of
course, also improved in some respects ; but it did
not rank with the leading high schools, as Eton and
Westminster. A writer in " The Edinburgh Review "
(January, 1845) says that twenty years before that
date Rugby " was the lowest and most Boeotian of the

57

$8 INTRODUCTION.

English schools." To-day its name is a household
word all over the English world. In East Tennessee
we have an English town bearing the familiar name.
All this sudden importance is due to the life, labors,
and biography of the man who was the head master
there from 1828 to 1842. He followed Dr. Wool ; and
he was followed by Dr. A. C. Tait, who rose to be
archbishop of Canterbury. But the name of Thomas
Arnold is better known to general readers than that
of either of these distinguished men. The present
head master is Dr. T. W. J ex- Blake, who has twenty-
one assistants.

He is a bold man who will undertake to improve
Stanley's " Life of Arnold," or even to condense it in
just proportion. Neither of these tasks is attempted
here. Such portions of the work have been taken as
serve to show Arnold's work and life as a teacher.
This could be done only by leaving out much valuable
matter. The first chapter, giving his life up to the
close of his university course, is given entire. From
the second chapter, containing his life as a private
tutor preparing pupils for the university, a page or two
of Stanley's text and some of Arnold's letters have
been omitted. The famous third chapter, with its full
record of his Rugby life, is given at length, the foot-
notes only being omitted. This chapter is long, and
out of proportion to the size of the memoir ; but no
careful reader will wish that a page had been left out.
Of the fourth chapter, that portion which describes
Arnold's domestic life is retained, with specimens of

INTRODUCTION. 59

his letters. The five following chapters, with letters
appended to each, are omitted entirely. Our fifth
chapter gives a portion of the last (tenth) chapter in
the original work. It contains a short reference to
the historical lectures at Oxford, while the touching
account of Arnold's death is given at length. This
should never be mutilated or abridged. The late
Francis Lieber, speaking to a pupil about that portion-
of the biography, said, literally with tears in his eyes,,
"His death was beautiful." Nothing has been added
to the work as Stanley wrote it ; and (except in a
single instance, where it seemed necessary to keep the
connection by joining two sentences, omitting a few
words in one) not a sentence or a word has been
changed. Throughout this memoir, the reader may
know that he has the literal words of the original
work, of which scarcely one-fourth is here given.

Arnold died in 1842; and his biography first ap-
peared in 1845, when the first edition was published
in London. Happy alike in its subject and in its
author, the work at once attracted attention in the
reading- world. It was translated into several foreign
languages. Perhaps it may be said to mark an era in
the art of writing biographies. In America, several
editions appeared in Boston and New York. It was
noticed in the leading reviews of that day. The
different religious magazines all agreed in praising the
skill of the biographer, while each found something -
to approve and admire in Arnold's character and life..
From the nature of the case, many of the readers of

*60 INTRODUCTION.

the book had never heard of Thomas Arnold until
after he was dead. It is not strange that many of his
countrymen did not fully appreciate him while he was
•with them. "Chambers's Encyclopaedia of English
Literature " was published after Arnold's death, but its
earlier editions do not contain his name. It is true,
the genius of Stanley made his teacher more widely
known than he had been during his life. But the
enthusiastic and discriminating biographer was un-
usually fortunate in his subject. The interest created
by the work in our country was not transient. From
year to year, it was noticed in the different literary and
religious periodicals. In 1856 a very appreciative
review appeared in Barnard's " American Journal of
Education " by Professor Eliot of Trinity College,
Connecticut. This was accompanied by a likeness,
which gave American readers their first view of
Arnold's fine English face.

There arose, of necessity, a demand for some of the
^writings of the great Rugby teacher. His inaugural
lectures at Oxford appeared in New York, with notes
by Professor Reed, in 1845. A volume of miscella-
nies and three volumes of -sermons were also repub-
lished. In 1856 another of Arnold's pupils showed
to the world a lifelike view of their beloved friend
and teacher. Thomas Hughes gave to all English-
: reading boys a lasting treasure in "Tom Brown at
Rugby." This little book seems likely to go down to
the next generation, stirring the hearts of the school-
boys everywhere, and helping them to lead pure and

INTRODUCTION. 6 1

manly lives. A few months ago the " St. Nicholas "'
magazine had two illustrated articles on Rugby School,,
which were, no doubt, welcome to thousands who wish
to see the places and the games associated in their
pleasant memories of "Tom and Arthur."

More than forty years have passed since Stanley 's-
work first appeared. Every generation has its own
heroes, and its own biographies, bearing the " form
and pressure of the times." Not many biographies go
down to a second or third generation of readers. A
magazine of February, 1886, has a list of special works
of the kind, recommended to young ministers by Dr..
Lyman Abbot. Among them are, Boswell's " Life of
Johnson," and Stanley's " Life of Arnold." There
seems to be a place still in our current literature for
this standard work. Several circumstances may com-
bine to give it room among books that are now read.
The visits of Dean Stanley, Matthew Arnold, and
Thomas Hughes to our country, and the Rugby colony
of Englishmen, may have this effect in some degree.
The popularity of "Tom Brown" will certainly pre-
pare the way. Many boys who have cried with " Tom "
because his fishing-frolic on that summer day in 1842
was so sadly brought to an end, will wish to learn
something more about the man over whose grave their
young hero stood and wept. This little memoir will
do its desired work in the case of every reader who
lays it down, wishing to read the large biography. It
is an era in the history of any young teacher when he
becomes familiar with the " Life of Thomas Arnold/'

62 INTRODUCTION.

This will suggest a special reason why such a volume
may appropriately find its place in our educational
literature. Many young teachers are eagerly search-
ing for books to help them in their daily work. Teach-
ers' institutes are common. Teachers' reading-circles
are formed in many communities. These are all en-
couraging signs. They make it the more important,
that our teachers shall be guarded against some com-
mon mistakes. There are so many helps just now for
them, they may be led to think that good teaching, in
the widest sense, is an art that can be readily taught
by an expert. They must be reminded that there is
no short or royal road to good teaching, other than
the king's highway of good living. He who wishes to
teach well, must, first of all, try to live well. He who
wishes to do something in his chosen life-work, must
aim to be something. He who wishes to have a good
influence, must first be a good influence. To teach a
child to read, to write, to cipher, is something. It may
be a great deal. But to teach him to live is far more.
To think, to reason, to love truth, and to search for
truth ; to love the right, and pursue it, alone if need
be ; to love all that is lovely, and to hate only that
which is hateful, — this is not so easy as to turn Latin
into English, or to do problems in algebra. All this
the teacher of to-day may forget in his search after
technical skill in handling the machinery of the school-
room, or in his haste 'to prepare the boy for a close
competitive examination. He may be satisfied if he
gives the boy some outside finish, as the barber is

INTRODUCTION. 63

satisfied if, cutting the boy's hair, he "turns out a
nice job." No fresh work in pedagogics can render
the record of a life like Arnold's useless. Here is an
object-lesson, which the teachers of this generation and
the next may study with growing interest. Let all
labor-saving and labor-utilizing expedients be multi-
plied in the schoolroom. Make your educational ma-
chinery as ingenious and as effective as possible. But
the vital question still recurs, " What force is to move
all this?" The teacher is greater than all machinery,
and the man is greater than the teacher. The teacher
is only one side of the man. Without regard to the
routine or usages of Rugby School, the life of the
Rugby teacher will quicken and help every other
teacher. Let us take a few extracts from letters not
published in this memoir : —

" The school will become more and more engrossing ; and so
it ought to be, for it is impossible ever to do enough in it. Yet
I think it essential that I should not give up my own reading,
as I always find any addition of knowledge always to turn to
account for the school in some way or other."

" Meantime, I write nothing, and read barely enough to keep
my mind in the state of a running stream, which I think it
ought to be, if it would form and feed other minds ; for it is
ill drinking out of a pond whose stock of water is merely the
remains of the long-past rains of the winter and spring, evapo-
rating and diminishing with every successive day of drought."

" A schoolmaster's intercourse is with the young, the strong,
and the happy ; and he cannot get on with them, unless in ani-
mal spirits he can sympathize with them, and show them that
his thoughtfulness is not connected with selfishness and weak-
ness."

64 INTRODUCTION.

As this short memoir is taken up wholly with Arnold
as a teacher, it may be well to refer here briefly to
other sides of his strong character, which are fully
brought out in the biography. He was a preacher,
and the author of several volumes of published ser-
mons. He lived at a time when the religious mind of
the Established Church and of other circles was deeply
stirred. Arnold could not be either a neutral or a
partisan on any important question. He could doubt,
or suspend his opinion, but he could not be indifferent.
We have nothing to do now with his peculiar views as
a theologian. Our only purpose is to call attention to
the style and general spirit of his sermons. His first
volume was published in 1828, soon after reaching
Rugby. In the preface he says, —

" My object has been, to bring the great principles of the
gospel home to the hearts and practices of my own country-
men, in my own time, and particularly to those of my own sta-
tion in society, with whose sentiments and language I am
naturally most familiar. And for this purpose, I have tried to
write in such a style as might be used in real life, in serious
conversation with our friends, or with those who asked our ad-
vice ; in the language, in short, of common life, and applied to
the cases of common life, but ennobled and strengthened by
those principles and feelings which are to be found only in the
gospel."

Might not these words stand as an exact description
of the style of some great evangelists who just now are
drawing the multitudes after them ?

Julius Hare says of Arnold, as a preacher, " I do

INTRODUCTION. 6$

not mean to profess an entire agreement with all his
opinions : on many points we differed more or less ;
but whether differing or agreeing, when I turn from the
ordinary theological or religious writers of the day, to
one of his volumes, there is a feeling, as it were, of
breathing the fresh mountain air after having been
shut up in the morbid atmosphere of a sick-room, or
in the fumigated vapors of an Italian church."

Arnold was an intelligent Englishman, a devoted
lover of his country and its free institutions. He fin-
ished his university course in the memorable year in
which the battle of Waterloo was fought. His whole
life was covered by a season of excitement and com-
motion in English history. Two years before his death,
he wrote to a friend, " The state of the times is so griev-
ous, that it really pierces through all private happiness,
and haunts me daily like a personal calamity." He
felt much, thought much, and wrote much on public
questions. He paid the usual, perhaps the inevitable,,
penalty of having strong personal convictions. He
was not spared that discipline which puts the finest
finish to heart and character. He was misunderstood
and reviled. When assailed, he could not utter the
party pass-word which brings eager clansmen to the
relief. He spoke on the subject of parties, with an
earnestness not easily understood by many then or
now. For example : Writing to a friend in 1833, ne
says, " May God grant to my sons, if they live to man-
hood, an unshaken love of truth, and a firm resolution
to follow it for themselves, with an intense abhorrence

66 INTRODUCTION.

of all party ties, save that one tie which binds them
to the party of Christ against wickedness ! ' Again, in
one of his sermons, —

" Be of one party to the death, and that is Christ's ; but
abhor every other. Abhor it ; that is, as a thing to which to
join yourselves : for every party is mixed up of good and evil,
of truth and falsehood; and in joining it, therefore, you join
with the one as well as the other. If circumstances should
occur which oblige you practically to act with any one party,
as the least of two evils, then watch yourselves the more lest
the least of two evils should, by any means, commend itself at
last to your mind as a positive good. Join it with a sad and
reluctant heart, protesting against its evil, dreading its victory,
far more pleased to serve it by suffering than by acting ; for it
is in Christ's cause only that we can act with heart and soul,
as well as patiently and triumphantly suffer. Do this amidst
reproach and suspicion and cold friendship and zealous enmity j
for this is the portion of those who seek to follow their Master,
and him only. Do it, although your foes be they of your own
household, those whom nature or habit or choice had once
bound to you most closely. And then you will understand
how, even now, there is a daily cross to be taken up by those
who seek not to please men, but God ; yet you will learn no
less how that cross, meekly and firmly borne, whether it be the
cross of men's ill opinion from without, or of our own evil
nature struggled against within, is now, as ever, peace and wis-
dom and sanctification and redemption through him who first
bore it."

Arnold published a critical edition of Thucydides,
and was writing a history of Rome. He was planning,
for many years, a work on "Church and State," or
" Christian Politics," which is touchingly alluded to in
ihe last lines traced by his pen, a few hours before his

INTRODUCTION. 6/

death. While in the " full activity of zeal and power,"
he fell in his prime. Two years before his death, a
friend called his attention to the fact that a number
of prominent men had died at the age of forty-seven
(Philip of Macedon, Addison, William Jones, Nelson,
Pitt) , and said to him, " Beware of your forty-seventh
year." He died at that age. When Stephen Olin
learned from an item in a newspaper of Arnold's
death, he said, with emotion, " I am just at the age at
which he died." When he read Stanley's " Life," a
year or two later, he was moved to tears. These two
great men lived in different continents, moved in differ-
ent religious circles, and never met. They had much
in common, added to their kindred pursuits as devoted
teachers. They were alike in the plain simplicity and
great purity of life and character, and in their deep
love and loyalty to Him whose name was so often on
their lips in prayer and praise.

Such are a few points in the history of the man
whose life is so lovingly and so truthfully portrayed by
the hand of his pupil. It seems appropriate every
way that the increasing Chautauquan brotherhood
should be invited to study the life of one who took
an abiding interest in the welfare of all classes, and in
all kindly intercourse between the rich and poor. If
alive to-day in our midst, we may well believe that
Arnold would give his aid to an enterprise which aims
to further these great ends. Cheap, safe reading for
the masses was a great desire with him. He once
wrote to a friend, " I never wanted articles on religious

68 INTRODUCTION.

subjects half so much as articles on common subjects,
written with a decidedly Christian tone."

Stanley's life was greatly influenced by Arnold ; and
nobly has he, at least, recognized a debt which never
can be fully repaid. It is touching now to read the
letters of his anxious mother, when seeking a good
school for her timid, bright little Arthur. She was
advised to write to the new head master at Rugby.
She did so, and the answer satisfied her : she had met
" the teacher who would take kindly to Arthur, and to
whom Arthur would take kindly." Arthur was sent
away to school ; and in a few months, of course, the
child-sick mother must visit the home-sick boy. Here
is a passage worth quoting from her pen : —

" March, 1829. — We went to dine with Dr. and Mrs. Arnold ;
and they are of the same opinion, that Arthur was as well off
and as happy as he could be at a public school : and, on the
whole, I am satisfied, — quite satisfied, considering all things,

— for Dr. and Mrs. Arnold are indeed delightful. She was ill,
but still animated and lively. He has a very remarkable coun-
tenance, something in forehead, and again in manner, which
puts me in mind of Reginald Heber ; and there is a mixture of
zeal, energy, and determination, tempered with wisdom, candor,
and benevolence, both in manner and in every thing he says.
He had examined Arthur's class, and said Arthur had done
very well, and the class generally. He said he was gradually
reforming, but that it was like pasting down a piece of paper,

— as fast as one corner was put down, another started up.
* Yes,' said Mrs. A., * but Dr. Arnold always thinks the corner
will not start again? And it is that happy, sanguine tempera-
ment which is so particularly calculated to do well in this, or
indeed any, situation." — AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE.

INTRODUCTION. 69

Arthur must have done very well on more than one
occasion. He took five medals, all that were open to
him in his Rugby course. When delivering the last,
the teacher quietly handed it to him, saying, " Thank
you, Stanley: we have nothing more to give you."
Stanley carried away from Rugby that which is better
than all medals, or even than all scholarship. He had,
for life, an intense admiration for goodness and truth,
as he had seen them embodied. At thirty years of
age he wrote the great biography, which, if he had
written nothing else, would give him a high place in
English literature. More than thirty other publications
of all sizes show his industry and zeal. His theologi-
cal views are not now before us, for passing words of
either praise or blame. His name will be long asso-
ciated with that of his great teacher. When in Balti-
more, in 1878, Dean Stanley said, in a public address,
" The lapse of years has only served to deepen in me
the conviction that no gift can be more valuable than
the recollection and inspiration of a great character
working on our own. I hope you may all experience
this at some time in your life, as I have done." On
his death-bed, three years later, he said of Westminster
Abbey, " I have labored amidst many frailties, and
with much weakness, to make this institution more and
more the great centre of religious and national life in
a truly liberal spirit." That rich fruit was from seed
planted at Rugby.

An admirable little volume of Stanley's quotable
passages has been recently published by Lothrop &

7O INTRODUCTION.

Co., Boston. In it, a specimen of Stanley's handwrit-
ing is given in facsimile, very unlike the hand which
Roger Ascham would have taught him. The sentence
is this : —

" It will be a great pleasure to me if any words of mine can
assist the rising generation of the United States to fulfil the
duties, and solve the problems, of the age in which we live."

Let many young teachers in this generation come
within the spell of Stanley's admiration for Arnold.
Let our colleges and schools be filled with men, who,
in their sphere, will try to catch the spirit of Arnold's
life. Pupils taught by such men will scarcely fail to
seek for the blessing of God upon themselves and
their generation. With that blessing, we may hope
they will be ready in some good degree to solve the
problems, and to meet the unanswered questions, which
the twentieth century will very soon lay before them.

JAS. H. CARLISLE.

SPARTANBURG, S.C., April 20, 1886.

THE

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

CHAPTER I.

EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION.

THOMAS ARNOLD, seventh child and youngest son
of William and Martha Arnold, was born on June 13,
1795, at West Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, where his
family had been settled for two generations, their ori-
ginal residence having been at Lowestoff, in Suffolk.

His father, who was collector of the customs at
Cowes, died suddenly of spasm in the heart, on March
3, 1 80 1. His two elder brothers, William and Mat-
thew, died, the first in 1806, the second in 1820. His
sisters all survived him, with the exception of the third,
Susannah, who, after a lingering complaint in the
spine, died at Laleham, in 1832.

His early education was confided by his mother to
her sister, Miss Delafield, who took an affectionate
pride in her charge, and directed all his studies as a
child. In 1803 he was sent to Warminster School,

71

72 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

in Wiltshire, under Dr. Griffiths, with whose assistant
master, Mr. Lawes, he kept up his intercourse long
after they had parted. In 1807 he was removed to
Winchester, where, having entered as a commoner,
and afterwards become a scholar of the college, he
remained till 1811. In after-life he always cherished
a strong Wykehamist feeling, and, during his head-
mastership at Rugby, often recurred to his knowledge,
there first acquired, of the peculiar constitution of a
public school, and to his recollection of the tact in
managing boys shown by Dr. Goddard, and the skill
in imparting scholarship which distinguished Dr.
Gabell, who, during his stay there, were successively
head masters of Winchester.

He was then, as always, of a shy and retiring dispo-
sition ; but his manner as a child, and till his entrance
at Oxford, was marked by a stiffness and formality the
very reverse of the joyousness and simplicity of his
later years : his family and schoolfellows both remem-
ber him as unlike those of his own age, and with pecul-
iar pursuits of his own ; and the tone and style of his
early letters, which have been for the most part pre-
served, are such as might naturally have been produced
by living chiefly in the company of his elders, and
reading, or hearing read to him before he could read
himself, books suited to a more advanced age. His
boyish friendships were strong and numerous. It is
needless here to enumerate the names of those Win-
chester schoolfellows of whose after-years it was the
pride and delight to watch the course of their com-

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 73

panion through life ; but the fond recollections, which
were long cherished on both sides, of his intercourse
with his earliest friend at Warminster, of whom he saw
and heard nothing from that time till he was called
upon in 1829 to write his epitaph, is worth record-
ing, as a remarkable instance of strong impressions
of nobleness of character, early conceived and long
retained.

Both as a boy and a young man he was remarkable
for a difficulty in early rising, amounting almost to a
constitutional infirmity ; and though his after-life will
show how completely this was overcome by habit, yet
he often said that early rising was a daily effort to him,
and that in this instance he never found the truth of
the usual rule, that all things are made easy by custom.
With this, however, was always united great occasional
energy ; and one of his schoolfellows gives it as his
impression of him, that " he was stiff in his opinions,
and utterly immovable by force or fraud, when he
made up his mind, whether right or wrong."

It is curious to trace the beginnings of some of his
later interests in his earliest amusements and occupa-
tions. He never lost the recollection of the impres-
sion produced upon him by the excitement of naval
and military affairs, of which he naturally saw and
heard much by living at the Isle of Wight in the time
of the war ; and the sports in which he took most pleas-
ure, with the few playmates of his childhood, were in
sailing rival fleets in his father's garden, or acting the
battles of the Homeric heroes, with whatever imple-

74 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

ments he could use as spear and shield, and reciting
their several speeches from Pope's translation of the
Iliad. He was from his earliest years exceedingly
fond of ballad poetry, which his Winchester school-
fellows used to learn from his repetition before they
had seen it in print ; and his own compositions as a
boy all ran in the same direction. A play of this kind,
in which his schoolfellows were introduced as the
dramatis persona, and a long poem of "Simon de
Montfort," in imitation of Scott's Marmion, procured
for him at school, by way of distinction from another
boy of the same name, the appellation of Poet Arnold.
And the earliest specimen of his composition which
has been preserved is a little tragedy, written before
he was seven years old, on " Piercy, Earl of Northum-
berland," suggested apparently by Home's play of
" Douglas ; " which, however, contains nothing worthy
of notice, except, perhaps, the accuracy of orthography,
language, and blank- verse metre, in which it is written,
and the precise arrangement of the different acts and
scenes.

But he was most remarked for his forwardness in
history and geography. His strong power of memory
(which, however, in later years depended mainly on
association) , extending to the exact state of the weather
on particular days, or the exact words and position of
passages which he had not seen for twenty years,
showed itself very early, and chiefly on these subjects.
One of the few recollections which he retained of his
father was, that he received from him, at three years

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 75

old, a present of Smollett's " History of England," as
a reward for the accuracy with which he had gone
through the stories connected with the portraits and
pictures of the successive reigns ; and, at the same
age, he used to sit at his aunt's table, arranging his
geographical cards, and recognizing by their shape, at
a glance, the different counties of the dissected map
of England.

He long retained a grateful remembrance of the
miscellaneous books to which he had access in the
school library at Warminster ; and when, in his pro-
fessorial chair at Oxford, he quoted Dr. Priestley's
"Lectures on History," it was from his recollection of
what he had there read when he was eight years old.
At Winchester he was a diligent student of Russell's
" Modern Europe ; " Gibbon and Mitford he had read
twice over before he left school; and amongst the
comments on his reading, and the bursts of politi-
cal enthusiasm on the events of the day in which he
indulged in his Winchester letters, it is curious, as con-
nected with his later labors, to read his indignation
when fourteen years old, "at the numerous boasts
which are everywhere to be met with in the Latin
writers." " I verily believe," he adds, " that half at
least of the Roman history is, if not totally false, at
least scandalously exaggerated : how far different are
the modest, unaffected, and impartial narrations of
Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon."

The period, both of his home and school education, .
was too short to exercise much influence upon his after-

76 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

life. But he always looked back upon it with a marked
tenderness. The keen sense which he entertained of
the bond of relationship and of early association —
not the less from the blank in his own domestic recol-
lections occasioned by his father's death, and his own
subsequent removal from the Isle of Wight — invested
with a peculiar interest the scenes and companions of
his childhood. His strong domestic affections had
acted as an important safeguard to him, when he was
thrown at so early an age into the new sphere of an
Oxford life ; and when, in later years, he was left the
head of the family, he delighted in gathering round
him the remains of his father's household, and in treas-
uring up every particular relating to his birthplace and
parentage, even to the graves of the older generations
of the family in the parish church at Lowestoff, and
the great willow-tree in his father's grounds at Slatt-
woods, from which he transplanted shoots successively
to Laleham, to Rugby, and to Fox How. Every date
in the family history, with the alteration of heredi-
tary names, and the changes of their residence, was
^carefully preserved for his children in his own hand-
writing ; and when in after-years he fixed on the
^abode of his old age in Westmoreland, it was his great
delight to regard it as a continuation of his own early
.home in the Isle of Wight. And when, as was his
'wont, he used to look back from time to time over
the whole of this period, it was with the solemn feel-
ing which is expressed in one of his later journals,
^written on a visit to the place of his earliest school-

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 77

education, in the interval between the close of his
life at Laleham and the beginning of his work at
Rugby. " Warminster, January 5th [1828] . I have not
written this date for more than twenty years; and how
little could I foresee when I wrote it last, what would
happen to me in the interval. And now to look for-
ward twenty years — how little can I guess of that
also. Only may He in whose hands are time and eter-
nity, keep me evermore His own ; that whether I live,,
I may live unto Him ; or whether I die, I may die
unto Him ; may He guide me with His counsel, and
after that receive me to glory, through Jesus Christ
our Saviour."

In 1811, in his sixteenth year, he was elected as a
scholar at Corpus Christi College, Oxford; in 1814
his name was placed in the first class in Litterse Hu-
maniores ; in the next year he was elected Fellow of
Oriel College ; and he gained the Chancellor's prize
for the two University essays, Latin and English, for
the years 1815 and 1817. Those who know the influ-
ence which his college friendships exercised over his.
after-life, and the deep affection which he always bore
to Oxford, as the scene of the happiest recollections
of his youth, and the sphere which he hoped to occupy
with the employments of his old age, will rejoice in the
possession of the following record of his undergraduate
life by that true and early friend, to whose timely ad-
vice, protection, and example, at the critical period

78 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

when he was thrown with all the spirits and the in-
experience of boyhood on the temptations of the uni-
versity, he always said and felt, that he had owed more
than to any other man in the world.

LETTER FROM MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE.

HEATH'S COURT, September, 1843.

MY DEAR STANLEY, — When you informed me of Mrs. Ar-
nold's wish that I would contribute to your memoir of our dear
friend, Dr. Arnold, such recollections as I had of his career as
an undergraduate at Oxford, with the intimation that they were
intended to fill up that chapter in his life, my only hesitation
in complying with her wish arose from my doubts whether my
impressions were so fresh and true, or my powers of expression
such, as to enable me to do justice to the subject. A true and
lively picture of him at that time would be, I am sure, interest-
ing in itself ; and I felt certain also that his Oxford residence
contributed essentially to the formation of his character in after-
life. My doubts remain, but I have not thought them impor-
tant enough to prevent my endeavoring at least to comply with
her request ; nor will I deny that I promise myself much pleas-
ure, melancholy though it may be, in this attempt to recall those
days. They had their troubles, I dare say ; but in retrospect
they always appear to me among the brightest and least check-
ered, if not the most useful, which have ever been vouchsafed
to me.

Arnold and I, as you know, were undergraduates of Corpus
Christi, a college very small in its numbers, and humble in its
buildings, but to which we and our fellow-students formed an
attachment never weakened in the after-course of our lives. At
the time I speak of, 1809. and thenceforward for some few years,
it was under the presidency, mild and inert, rather than pater-
nal, of Dr. Cooke. His nephew, Dr. Williams, was the vice-

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 79

president and medical fellow, the only lay-fellow permitted by
the statutes. Retired he was in his habits, and not forward to
interfere with the pursuits or studies of the young men. But
I am bound to record, not only his learning and good taste,
but the kindness of his heart, and his readiness to assist them
by advice and criticism in their compositions. When I wrote
for the Latin-verse prize in 1810, I was much indebted to him
for advice in matters of taste and Latinity, and for the pointing
out many faults in my rough verses.

Our tutors were the present Sedleian professor, the Rev.
G. L. Cooke, and the lately deceased president, the Rev. T.
Bridges. Of the former, because he is alive, I will only say
that I believe no one ever attended his lectures without learn-
ing to admire his unwearied industry, patience, and good tem-
per, and that few, if any, quitted his pupil-room without retaining
a kindly feeling towards him. The recent death of Dr. Bridges
would have affected Arnold as it has me. He was a most
amiable man. The affectionate earnestness of his manner, and
his high tone of feeling, fitted him especially to deal with young
men. He made us always desirous of pleasing him : perhaps
his fault was that he was too easily pleased. I am sure that
he will be long and deeply regretted in the university

It was not, however, so much by the authorities of the col-
lege that Arnold's character was affected, as by its constitution
and system, and by the residents whom it was his fortune to
associate with familiarly there. I shall hardly do justice to my
subject unless I state a few particulars as to the former, and
what I am at liberty to mention as to the latter. Corpus is a
very small establishment : twenty fellows and twenty scholars,
with four exhibitioners, form the foundation. No independent
members were admitted, except gentlemen commoners; and
they were limited to six. Of the scholars, several were bache-
lors ; and the whole number of students actually under college
tuition seldom exceeded twenty. But the scholarships, though
not entirely open, were yet enough so to admit of much com-
petition ; their value, and, stili more, the creditable strictness

8O LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

and impartiality with which the examinations were conducted
(qualities at that time more rare in college elections than now),
insured a number of good candidates for each vacancy : and
we boasted a more than proportionate share of successful com-
petitors for university honors. It had been generally under-
stood (I know not whether the statutes prescribe the practice),
that, in the examinations, a large allowance was made for
youth. Certain it was, that we had many very young candi-
dates, and that, of these, many remarkable for early proficiency
succeeded. We were then a small society, the members rather
under the usual age, and with more than the ordinary propor-
tion of ability and scholarship. Our mode of tuition was in
harmony with these circumstances, not by private lectures, but
in classes of such a size as excited emulation, and made us
careful in the exact and neat rendering of the original, yet not
so numerous as to prevent individual attention on the tutor's
part, and familiar knowledge of each pupil's turn and talents.
In addition to the books read in lecture, the tutor at the begin-
ning of the term settled with each student upon some book to
be read by himself in private, and prepared for the public
examination at the end of term in Hall ; and with this book,
something on paper, either an analysis of it, or remarks upon
it, was expected to be produced, which insured that the book
should really have been read. It has often struck me since,
that this whole plan, which is now, I believe, in common use
in the university, was well devised for the tuition of young men
of our age. We were not entirely set free from the leading-
strings of the school : accuracy was cared for. We were accus-
tomed to viva voce rendering, and vivd, voce question and answer
in our lecture-room, before an audience of fellow-students
whom we sufficiently respected. At the same time, the addi-
tional reading, trusted to ourselves alone, prepared us for
accurate private study, and for our final exhibition in the
schools.

One result of all these circumstances was, that we lived on
the most familiar terms with each other. We might be, indeed

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 8 1

we were, somewhat boyish in manner, and in the liberties we
took with each other : but our interest in literature, ancient and
modern, and in all the stirring matters of that stirring time,
was not boyish ; we debated the classic and romantic question ;
we discussed poetry and history, logic and philosophy ; or we
fought over the Peninsular battles and the Continental cam-
paigns with the energy of disputants personally concerned in
them. Our habits were inexpensive and temperate. One
break-up party was held in the junior common room at the
end of each term, in which we indulged our genius more freely*
and our merriment, to say the truth, was somewhat exuberant
and noisy; but the authorities wisely forbore too strict an
inquiry into this.

It was one of the happy peculiarities of Corpus, that the
bachelor scholars were compelled to residence. This regula-
tion, seemingly inconvenient, but most wholesome, as I cannot
but think for themselves, and now unwisely relaxed, operated
very beneficially on the undergraduates ; with the best and the
most advanced of these, they associated very usefully : I speak
here with grateful and affectionate remembrances of the privi-
leges which I enjoyed in this way.

You will see that a society thus circumstanced was exactly-
one most likely to influence strongly the character of such a
lad as Arnold was at his election. He came to us in Lent
Term, 1811, from Winchester, winning his election against
several very respectable candidates. He was a mere boy in
appearance as well as in age, but we saw in a very short time
that he was quite equal to take his part in the arguments of
the common room; and he was, I rather think, admitted by
Mr. Cooke at once into his senior class. As he was equal,
so was he ready, to take part in our discussions : he was fond
of conversation on serious matters, and vehement in argument ;
fearless, too, in advancing his opinions, which, to say the truth,
often startled us a good deal ; but he was ingenuous and can-
did ; and though the fearlessness with which, so young as he
was, he advanced his opinions might have seemed to betoken

82 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

presumption, yet the good temper with which he bore retort or
rebuke relieved him from that imputation; he was bold and
warm, because, so far as his knowledge went, he saw very clearly,
and he was an ardent lover of truth ; but I never saw in him
even then a grain of vanity or conceit. I have said that some
of his opinions startled us a good deal : we were indeed, for the
most part, Tories in Church and State, great respecters of
things as they were, and not very tolerant of the disposition
which he brought with him to question their wisdom. Many
and long were the conflicts we had, and with unequal numbers.
I think I have seen all the leaders of the common room en-
gaged with him at once, with little order or consideration, as
may be supposed, and not always with great scrupulosity as to
the fairness of our arguments. This was attended by no loss
of regard, and scarcely ever, or seldom, by even momentary
loss of temper. We did not always convince him, -7- perhaps
we ought not always to have done so, — yet in the end a consid-
erable modification of his opinions was produced: in one of
his letters to me, written at a much later period, he mentions
this change. In truth, there were those among us calculated
to produce an impression on his affectionate heart and ardent,
ingenuous mind ; and the rather, because the more we saw of
him, and the more we battled with him, the more manifestly
did we respect and love him. The feeling with which we
argued gave additional power to our arguments over a disposi-
tion such as his, and thus he became attached to young men
of the most different tastes and intellects; his love for each
taking a different color, more or less blended with respect,
fondness, or even humor, according to those differences ; and
in return they all uniting in love and respect for him.

There will be some few to whom these remembrances will
speak with touching truth: they will remember his single-
hearted and devout schoolfellow, who early gave up his native
land, and devoted himself to the missionary cause in India ;
the high-souled and imaginative, though somewhat indolent,
lad, who came to us from Westminster ; one bachelor, whose

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 83

father's connection with the House of Commons and residence
in Palace Yard made him a great authority with us as to the
world without, and the statesmen whose speeches he sometimes
heard, but we discussed much as if they had been personages
in history, and whose remarkable love for historical and geo-
graphical research, and his proficiency in it, with his clear
judgment, quiet humor, and mildness in communicating infor-
mation, made him peculiarly attractive to Arnold ; and, above
all, our senior among the undergraduates, though my junior
in years, the author of the " Christian Year," who came fresh
from the single teaching of his venerable father, and achieved
the highest honors of the university at an age when others
frequently are but on her threshold. Arnold clung to all these
with equal fidelity, but regarded each with different feelings :
each produced on him a salutary but different effect. His love
for all without exception, I know, if I know any thing of an-
other man's heart, continued to his life's end : it survived (how
can the mournful facts be concealed in any complete and truth-
telling narrative of his life ?) separation, suspension 'of inter-
course, and entire disagreement of opinion, with the last of
these, on points believed by them both to be of essential
importance. These two held their opinions with a zeal and
tenacity proportionate to their importance : each believed the
other in error pernicious to the faith, and dangerous to himself :
and what they believed sincerely, each thought himself bound
to state, and stated it openly, it may be with too much of
warmth ; and unguarded expressions were unnecessarily, I think
inaccurately, reported. Such disagreements in opinion between
the wise and good are incident to our imperfect state; and
even the good qualities of the heart, earnestness, want of sus-
picion, may lay us open to them : but, in the case before me,
the affectionate interest with which each regarded the other
never ceased. I had the good fortune to retain the intimate
friendship and correspondence of both ; and I can testify with
authority, that the elder spoke and wrote of the younger as an
elder brother might of a younger, whom he tenderly loved,

84 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

though he disapproved of his course : while it was not in
Arnold's nature to forget how much he had owed to Keble ;
he bitterly lamented, what he labored to avert, the suspension
of their intimate intercourse : he was at all times anxious to
renew it; and although, where the disagreement turned on
points so vital between men who held each to his own so con-
scientiously, this may have been too much to expect, yet it is
a most gratifying thought to their common friends, that they
would probably have met at Fox How under Arnold's roof
but a few weeks after he was called away to that state in which
the doubts and controversies of this life will receive their clear
resolution.

I return from my digression. Arnold came to us, of course,
not a formed scholar, nor, I think, did he leave the college
with scholarship proportioned to his great abilities and oppor-
tunities. And this arose, in part, from the decided preference
which he gave to the philosophers and historians of antiquity
over the poets, coupled with the distinction which he then
made, erroneous as I think, and certainly extreme in degree,
between words and things, as he termed it. His correspond-
ence with me will show how much he modified this, too, in
after-life ; but at that time he was led by it to undervalue those
niceties of language, the intimate acquaintance with which he
did not then perceive to be absolutely necessary to a precise
knowledge of the meaning of the author. His compositions,
therefore, at this time, though full of matter, did not give prom-
ise of that clear and spirited style which he afterwards mas-
tered : he gained no verse prize, but was an unsuccessful
competitor for the Latin Verse in the year 1812, when Henry
Latham succeeded, the third brother of that house who had
done so ; and though this is the only occasion on which I have
any memorandum of his writing, I do not doubt that he made
other attempts. Among us were several who were fond of
writing English verse : Keble was even then raising among us
those expectations which he has since so fully justified, and
Arnold was not slow to follow the example. I have several

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 85

poems of his written about this time, neat and pointed in ex-
pression, and just in thought, but not remarkable for fancy or
imagination. I remember some years after, his telling me that
he continued the practice " on principle : " he thought it a useful
and humanizing exercise.

But, though not a poet himself, he was not insensible of the
beauties of poetry, — far from it. I reflect with some pleasure,
that I first introduced him to what has been somewhat unrea-
sonably called the " Lake Poetry ; " my near relation to one,
and connection with another, of the poets, whose works were so
called, were the occasion of this : and my uncle having sent
me the " Lyrical Ballads," and the first edition of Mr. Words-
worth's poems, they became familiar among us. We were
proof, I am glad to think, against the criticism, if so it might
be called, of " The Edinburgh Review : " we felt their truth and
beauty, and became zealous disciples of Wordsworth's philos-
ophy. This was of peculiar advantage to Arnold, whose lean-
ing was too direct for the practical and evidently useful : it
brought out in him that feeling for the lofty and imaginative
which appeared in all his intimate conversation, and may be
seen spiritualizing those even of his writings in which, from
their subject, it might seem to have less place. You know in
later life how much he thought his beloved Fox How en-
hanced in value by its neighborhood to Rydal Mount, and
what store he set on the privilege of frequent and friendly
converse with the venerable genius of that sweet spot.

But his passion, at the time I am treating of, was for Aris-
totle and Thucydides : and however he became some few
years after more sensible of the importance of the poets in
classic literature, this passion he retained to the last; those
who knew him intimately, or corresponded with him, will bear
me witness how deeply he was imbued with the language and
ideas of the former ; how in earnest and unreserved conversa-
tion, or in writing, his train of thoughts was affected by the
" Ethics " and " Rhetoric ; " how he cited the maxims of the
Stagirite as oracles, and how his language was quaintly and

86 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

racily pointed with phrases from him. I never knew a man
who made such familiar, even fond, use of an author ; it is
scarcely too much to say, that he spoke of him as of one inti-
mately and affectionately known and valued by him ; and when
he was selecting his son's university, with much leaning for
Cambridge, and many things which at the time made him in-
cline against Oxford, dearly as he loved her, Aristotle turned
the scale : " I could not consent," said he, " to send my son to
a university where he would lose the study of him altogether.'*
" You may believe," he said with regard to the London univer-
sity, " that I have not forgotten the dear old Stagirite in our
examinations ; and I hope that he will be construed and dis-
cussed in Somerset House as well as in the schools." His
fondness for Thucydides first prompted a Lexicon Thucydi-
deum, in which he made some progress at Laleham in 1821 and
1822, and ended, as you know, in his valuable edition of that
author.

Next to these he loved Herodotus. I have said that he was
not, while I knew him at Oxford, a formed scholar, and that
he composed stiffly and with difficulty ; but to this there was a
seeming exception : he had so imbued himself with the style of
Herodotus and Thucydides, that he could write narratives in
the style of either at pleasure with wonderful readiness, and, as
we thought, with the greatest accuracy. I remember, too, an
account by him of a " Vacation Tour in the Isle of Wight,"
after the manner of the " Anabasis."

Arnold's bodily recreations were walking and bathing. It
was a particular delight to him, with two or three companions,
to make what he called a skirmish across the country ; on these
occasions we deserted the road, crossed fences, and leaped
ditches, or fell into them : he enjoyed the country round Ox-
ford ; and, while out in this way, his spirits would rise, and his
mirth overflowed. Though delicate in appearance, and not
giving promise of great muscular strength, yet his form was
light, and he was capable of going long distances, and bearing
much fatigue.

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 87

You know, that, to his last moment of health, he had the
same predilections : indeed, he was, as much as any I ever
knew, one whose days were

" Bound each to each by natural piety."

His manner had all the tastes and feelings of his youth, only
more developed and better regulated. The same passion for
the sea and shipping, and his favorite Isle of Wight ; the same
love for external nature, the same readiness in viewing the
characteristic features of a country and its marked positions,
or the most beautiful points of a prospect, for all which he was
remarkable in after-life, — we noticed in him then. When Pro-
fessor Buckland, then one of our fellows, began his career in
that science, to the advancement of which he has contributed
so much, Arnold became one of his most earnest and intelli-
gent pupils ; and you know how familiarly and practically he
applied geological facts in all his later years.

In June, 1812, I was elected fellow of Exeter College, and
determined to pursue the law as my profession : my residence
at Oxford was thenceforward only occasional, but the friendship
which had grown up between us suffered no diminution. Some-
thing, I forget now the particular circumstance, led to an in-
terchange of letters, which ripened into a correspondence,
continued with rather unusual regularity, when our respective
occupations are considered, to within a few days of his death.
It may show the opinion which I even then entertained of him,
that I carefully preserved from the beginning every letter which
I ever received from him : you have had an opportunity of
judging of the value of the collection.

After I had ceased to reside, a small debating society, called
the Attic Society, was formed in Oxford, which held its meet-
ings in the rooms of the members by turns. Arnold was among
the earliest members, and was, I believe, an embarrassed
speaker. This I should have expected ; for, however he might
appear a confident advancer of his own opinions, he was, in

88 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

truth, bashful, and at the same time had so acute a perception
of what was ill-seasoned or irrelevant, that he would want that
freedom from restraint which is essential at least to young
speakers. This society was the germ of the Union, but I
believe he never belonged to it.

In our days, the religious controversies had not begun, by
which the minds of young men at Oxford are, I fear, now pre-
maturely and too much occupied: the routine theological
studies of the University were, I admit, deplorably low ; but
the earnest ones amongst us were diligent readers of Barrow,
Hooker, and Taylor. Arnold was among these, but I have no
recollection of any thing at that time distinctive in his religious
opinions. What occurred afterwards does not properly fall
within my chapter, yet it is not unconnected with it; and I
believe I can sum up all that need be said on such a subject,
as shortly and as accurately, from the sources of information
in my hands, as any other person can. His was an anxiously
inquisitive mind, a scrupulously conscientious heart: his in-
quiries, previously to his taking orders, led him on to distress-
ing doubts on certain points in the Articles; these were not
low nor rationalistic in their tendency, according to the bad
sense of that term ; there was no indisposition in him to believe
merely because the article transcended his reason ; he doubted
the proof and the interpretation of the textual authority. His
state was very painful, and I think morbid; for I remarked
that the two occasions on which I was privy to his distress,
were precisely those in which to doubt was against his dearest
schemes of worldly happiness ; and the consciousness of this
seemed to make him distrustful of the arguments which were
intended to lead his mind to acquiescence. Upon the first
occasion to which I allude, he was a fellow of Oriel, and in
close intercourse with one of the friends I have before men-
tioned, then also a fellow of the same college : to him as well
as to me he opened his mind, and from him he received the
wisest advice, which he had the wisdom to act upon ; he was
bid to pause in his inquiries, to pray earnestly for help and

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 89

light from above, and turn himself more strongly than ever to
the practical duties of a holy life : he did so, and through
severe trials was finally blessed with perfect peace of mind
and a settled conviction. If there be any so unwise as to
rejoice that Arnold, in his youth, had doubts on important doc-
trines, let him be sobered with the conclusion of those doubts,
when Arnold's mind had not become weaker, nor his pursuit
of truth less honest or ardent, but when his abilities were
matured, his knowledge greater, his judgment more sober : if
there be any who, in youth, are suffering the same distress
which befell him, let his conduct be their example, and the
blessing which was vouchsafed to him, their hope and consola-
tion. In a letter from that friend to myself, of the date of Feb.
14, 1819, I find the following extract, which gives so true and
so considerate an account of this passage in Arnold's life, that
you may be pleased to insert it.

"I have not talked with Arnold lately on the distressing
thoughts which he wrote to you about ; but I am fearful, from
his manner at times, that he has by no means got rid of them,
though I feel quite confident that all will be well in the end.
The subject of them is that most awful one, on which all very
inquisitive reasoning minds are, I believe, most liable to such
temptations, — I mean the doctrine of the blessed Trinity. Do
not start, my dear Coleridge : I do not believe that Arnold
has any serious scruples of the understanding about it ; but it
is a defect of his mind, that he cannot get rid of a certain feel-
ing of objections — and particularly when, as he fancies, the
bias is so strong upon him to decide one way from interest : he
scruples doing what I advise him, which is, to put down the
objections by main force whenever they arise in his mind, fear-
ful that in so doing he shall be violating his conscience for
maintenance' sake. I am still inclined to think with you, that
the wisest thing he could do would be to take John M. (a
young pupil whom I was desirous of placing under his care)
and a curacy somewhere or other, and cure himself, not by
physic, — i.e., reading and controversy, — but by diet and regi-

QO LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

men; i.e., holy living. In the mean time, what an excellent
fellow he is ! I do think that one might safely say, as some
one did of some other, ' One had better have Arnold's doubts
than most men's certainties.' "

I believe I have exhausted my recollections ; and if I have
accomplished as I ought, what I proposed to myself, it will be
hardly necessary for me to sum up formally his character as an
Oxford undergraduate. At the commencement a boy, and at
the close retaining, not ungracefully, much of boyish spirits,
frolic, and simplicity ; in mind vigorous, active, clear-sighted,
industrious, and daily accumulating and. assimilating treasures
of knowledge ; not averse to poetry, but delighting rather in
dialectics, philosophy, and history, with less of imaginative than
reasoning power ; in argument bold almost to presumption,
and vehement; in temper easily roused to indignation, yet
more easily appeased, and entirely free from bitterness ; fired,
indeed, by what he deemed ungenerous or unjust to others,
rather than by any sense of personal wrong; somewhat too
little deferential to authority; yet without any real inconsis-
tency, loving what was good and great in antiquity the more
ardently and reverently because it was ancient; a casual or
unkind observer might have pronounced him somewhat too
pugnacious in conversation, and too positive. I have given,
I believe, the true explanation : scarcely any thing would have
pained him more than to be convinced that he had been guilty
of want of modesty, or of deference where it was justly due ;
no one thought these virtues of more sacred obligation. In
heart, if I can speak with confidence of any of the friends of
my youth, I can of his, that it was devout and pure, simple,
sincere, affectionate, and faithful.

It is time that I should close : already, I fear, I have dwelt
with something like an old man's prolixity on passages of my
youth, forgetting that no one can take the same interest in them
which I do myself ; that deep personal interest must, however,
be my excuse. Whoever sets a right value on the events of
his life for good or for evil, will agree, that next in importance

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 9 1

to the rectitude of his own course and the selection of his part-
ner for life, and far beyond all the wealth or honors which may
reward his labor, far even beyond the unspeakable gift of
bodily health, are the friendships which he forms in youth..
That is the season when natures soft and pliant grow together,
each becoming part of the other, and colored by it : thus, to-
become one in heart with the good and generous and devout,
is, by God's grace, to become, in measure, good and generous
and devout. Arnold's friendship has been one of the many
blessings of my life. I cherish the memory of it with mourn-
ful gratitude, and I cannot but dwell with lingering fondness
on the scene and the period which first brought us together.
Within the peaceful walls of Corpus I made friends, of whom
all are spared me but Arnold ; he has fallen asleep : but the
bond there formed, which the lapse of years and our differing
walks in life did not unloosen, and which strong opposition of
opinions only rendered more intimate, though interrupted in
time, I feel not to be broken, — may I venture, without unsea-
sonable solemnity, to express the firm trust, that it will endure
forever in eternity !

Believe me, my dear Stanley,

Very truly yours,

J. T. C.

92 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

CHAPTER II.

LIFE AT LALEHAM.

THE society of the Fellows of Oriel College then, as
for some time afterwards, numbered amongst its mem-
bers some of the most rising men in the university ;
and it is curious to observe the list, which, when the
youthful scholar of Corpus was added to it, contained
the names of Copleston, Davison, Whately, Keble,
Hawkins, and Hampden, and, shortly after he left it,
those of Newman and Pusey, the former of whom was
elected into his vacant fellowship. Amongst the
friends with whom he thus became acquainted for the
first time, may chiefly be mentioned Dr. Hawkins,
since Provost of Oriel, to whom in the last year of his
life he dedicated his " Lectures on Modern History ; "
and Dr. Whately, afterwards principal of St. Alban's
Hall, and now archbishop of Dublin, towards whom
his regard was enhanced by the domestic intercourse
which was constantly interchanged in later years be-
tween their respective families, and to whose writings
and conversations he took an early opportunity of
expressing his obligations in the preface to his first

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 93

volume of Sermons, in speaking of the various points
on which the communication of his friend's views had
" extended or confirmed his own." For the next four
years he remained at Oxford, taking private pupils,,
and reading extensively in the Oxford libraries, an.
advantage which he never ceased to remember grate-
fully himself, and to impress upon others, and of which
the immediate results remain in a great number of
MSS., both in the form of abstracts of other works,
and of original sketches on history and theology.
They are remarkable rather as proofs of industry than
of power ; and the style of all his compositions, both
at this time and for some years later, is cramped by a
stiffness and formality alien alike to the homeliness of
his first published works and the vigor of his later ones,,
and strikingly recalling his favorite lines,

" The old man clogs our earliest years,
And simple childhood comes the last."

But already, in the examination for the Oriel Fellow-
ships, Dr. Whately had pointed out to the other elect-
ors the great capability of " growth " which he believed
to be involved in the crudities of the youthful candi-
date's exercises, and which, even in points where he
was inferior to his competitors, indicated an approach-
ing superiority. And widely different as were his
juvenile compositions in many points from those of
his after-life, yet it is interesting to observe in them
the materials which those who knew the pressure of
his numerous avocations used to wonder when he

94 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

could have acquired, and to trace amidst the strangest
contrast of his general thoughts and style occasional
remarks of a higher strain, which are in striking,
though in some instances perhaps accidental, coinci-
dence with some of his later views. He endeavored
in his historical reading to follow the plan, which he
afterwards recommended in his "Lectures," of making
himself thoroughly master of some one period, — the
fifteenth century, with ''Philip de Comines" as his
text-book, seems to have been the chief sphere of his
studies, — and the first book after his election which
appears in the Oriel Library as taken out in his name,
is "Rymer's Fcedera." Many of the judgments of
his maturer years on Gibbon, Livy, and Thucydides
are to be found in a MS. of 1815, in which, under the
name of " Thoughts on History," he went through the
characteristics of the chief ancient and modern histo-
rians. And it is almost startling, in the midst of a
rhetorical burst of his youthful Toryism in a journal
of 1815, to meet with expressions of real feeling about
the social state of England such as might have been
written in his latest years; or amidst the common-
place remarks which accompany an analysis of St.
Paul's Epistles and Chrysostom's " Homilies," in 1818,
to stumble on a statement, complete as far as it goes,
of his subsequent doctrine of the identity of Church
and State.

Meanwhile he had been gradually led to fix upon
his future course in life. In December, 1818, he was
ordained deacon at Oxford: and on Aug. n, 1820,

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 95

he married Mary, youngest daughter of the Rev, John
Penrose, rector of Fledborough, in Nottinghamshire,
and sister of one of his earliest school and college
friends, Trevenen Penrose ; having previously settled
in 1819, at Laleham, near Staines, with his mother,
aunt, and sister, where he remained for the next nine
years, taking seven or eight young men as private
pupils in preparation for the universities, for a short
time in a joint establishment with his brother-in-
law, Mr. Buckland, and afterwards independently by
himself.

In the interval which had elapsed between the end
of his undergraduate career at Oxford, and his entrance
upon life, had taken place the great change from boy-
hood to manhood, and with it a corresponding change
or growth of character, more marked and more impor-
tant than at any subsequent period of his life. There
was indeed another great step to be taken before his
mind reached that later stage of development which
was coincident with his transition from Laleham to
Rugby. The prosaic and matter-of-fact element which
has been described in his early Oxford life still retained
its predominance, and to a certain extent dwarfed and
narrowed his sphere of thought ; the various principles
of political and theological science which contained in
germ all that was to grow out of them, had not yet
assumed their proper harmony and proportions; his
feelings of veneration, if less confined than in later
years, were also less intense ; his hopes and views, if
more practicable and more easily restrained by the

96 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

advice of others, were also less wide in their range,
and less lofty in their conception.

But, however great were the modifications which his
character subsequently underwent, it is the change of
tone at this time, between the earlier letters of this
period (such as the one or two first of the ensuing
series) and those which immediately succeed them,
that marks the difference between the high spirit and
warm feelings of his youth and the fixed earnestness
and devotion which henceforth took possession of his
whole heart and will. Whatever may have been the
outward circumstances which contributed to this, —
the choice of a profession, the impression left upon
him by the sudden loss of his elder brother, the new
and to him elevating influences of married life, the re-
sponsibility of having to act as the guide and teacher
of others, — it was now for the first time that the prin-
ciples, which before he had followed rather as a mat-
ter of course, and as held and taught by those around
him, became emphatically part of his own convictions,
to be embraced and carried out for life and for death.

From this time forward, such defects as were pecul-
iar to his boyhood and early youth entirely disappear :
the indolent habits ; the morbid restlessness and oc-
casional weariness of duty ; the indulgence of vague
schemes without definite purpose ; the intellectual
doubts which beset the first opening of his mind to
the realities of religious belief, when he shared, at least
in part, the state of perplexity which in his later ser-
mons he feelingly describes as the severest of earthly

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 97

trials, and which so endeared to him throughout life
the story of the confession of the apostle Thomas, —
all seem to have vanished away, and never again to
have diverted him from the decisive choice and ener-
getic pursuit of what he set before him as his end and
duty. From this time forward, no careful observer
can fail to trace that deep consciousness of the invis-
ible world, and that power of bringing it before him in
the midst and through the means of his most active
engagements, which constituted the peculiarity of his
religious life, and the moving spring of his whole life.
It was not that he frequently introduced sacred names
in writing or in conversation, or that he often dwelt
on divine interpositions ; where many would have done
so without scruple, he would shrink from it : and in
speaking of his own religious feelings, or in appealing
to the religious feelings of others, he was, except to
those most intimate with him, exceedingly reserved.
But what was true generally of the thorough interpene-
tration of the several parts of his character, was pecul-
iarly true of it in its religious aspect : his natural
faculties were not unclothed, but clothed upon ; they
were at once colored by, and gave a color to, the be-
lief which they received. It was in his common acts
of life, whether public or private, that the depth of his
religious convictions most visibly appeared : it was in
his manner of dwelling on religious subjects, that the
characteristic tendencies of his mind chiefly displayed
themselves.

Accordingly, whilst it is impossible, for this reason,

98 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

to understand his religious belief except through the
knowledge of his actual life, and his writings on ordi-
nary subjects, it is impossible, on the other hand, to
understand his life and writings without bearing in
mind how vivid was his realization of those truths of
the Christian Revelation on which he most habitually
dwelt. It was this which enabled him to undertake
labors which, without such a power, must have crushed
or enfeebled the spiritual growth which in him they
seemed only to foster. It was the keen sense of
thankfulness consciously awakened by every distinct
instance of his many blessings, which more than any
thing else explained his close union of joyousness with
seriousness. In his even tenor of life, it was difficult
for any one who knew him not to imagine " the golden
chain of heavenward thoughts and humble prayers by
which, whether standing or sitting, in the intervals of
work or of amusement," he " linked together" his
•"more special and solemn devotions" (Sermons, vol.
iii. p. 277) ; or not to trace something of the con-
sciousness of an invisible presence in the collectedness
with which, at the call of his common duties, he rose
at once from his various occupations ; or in the calm
repose which, in the midst of his most active labors,
took all the disturbing accidents of life as a matter of
course, and made toil so real a pleasure, and relaxa-
tion so real a refreshment, to him. And in his solemn
and emphatic expressions on subjects expressly reli-
gious ; in his manner of awful reverence when speak-
ing of God or of the Scriptures ; in his power of realizing

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 99

the operation of something more than human, whether
in his abhorrence of evil, or in his admiration of good-
ness, — the impression on those who heard him was
often as though he knew what others only believed, as
though he had seen what others only talked about.
" No one could know him even a little," says one who
was himself not amongst his most intimate friends,
" and not be struck by his absolute wrestling with evil,
so that like St. Paul he seemed to be battling with the
wicked One, and yet with the feeling of God's help on
his side, scorning as well as hating him."

Above all, it was necessary for a right understand-
ing, not only of his religious opinions, but of his whole
character, to enter into the peculiar feeling of love
and adoration which he entertained towards our Lord
Jesus Christ, — peculiar in the distinctness and inten-
sity which, as it characterized almost all his common
impressions, so in this case gave additional strength
and meaning to those feelings with which he regarded
not only his work of redemption, but himself as a liv-
ing Friend and Master. " In that unknown world in
which our thoughts become instantly lost," it was his
real support and delight to remember that, " still there
is one object on which our thoughts and imaginations
may fasten, no less than our affections ; that amidst
the light, dark from excess of brilliance, which sur-
rounds the throne of God, we may yet discern the
gracious form of the Son of man." (Sermons, vol.
iii. p. 90.) In that consciousness, which pressed upon
him at times even heavily, of the difficulty of consider-

100 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, £>.D.

ing God in his own nature, believing, as he did, that
" Providence, the Supreme Being, the Deity, and other
such terms, repel us to an infinite distance," and that
the revelation of the Father, in himself unapproach-
able, is to be looked upon rather as the promise of
another life than as the support of this life, it was to
him a thought of perhaps more than usual comfort
to feel that " our God " is "Jesus Christ our Lord, the
image of the invisible God," and that "in him is rep-
resented all the fulness of the Godhead, until we know
even as we are known." (Vol. v. p. 222.) And with
this full conviction, both of his conscience and under-
standing, that he of whom he spoke was " still the
very selfsame Jesus in all human affections and divine
excellences," there was a vividness and tenderness in
his conception of him, on which, if one may so say,
all his feelings of human friendship and affection
seemed to fasten as on their natural object, " bringing
before him his actions, imaging to himself his very
voice and look," — there was to him (so to speak) a
greatness in the image thus formed of him, on which
all his natural instincts of reverence, all his range of
historical interest, all his admiration of truth and good-
ness, at once centred. " Where can we find a name
so holy as that we may surrender our whole souls to
it, before which obedience, reverence without measure,
intense humility, most unreserved adoration, may all
be duly rendered?" was the earnest inquiry of his
whole nature, intellectual and moral, no less than reli-
gious. And the answer to it in like manner expressed

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. IOI

what he endeavored to make the rule of his own per-
sonal conduct, and the centre of all his moral and reli-
gious convictions : " One name there is, and one alone,
one alone in heaven and earth, — not truth, not jus-
tice, not benevolence, not Christ's mother, not his
holiest servants, not his blessed sacraments, nor his
very mystical body the Church, but himself only who
died for us, and rose again, Jesus Christ, both God and
man. (Sermons, vol. iv. p. 210.)

These were the feelings which, though more fully
developed with the advance of years, now for the first
time took thorough possession of his mind, and which
struck upon his moral nature at this period with the
same kind of force (if one may use the comparison)
as the new views, which he acquired from time to time
of persons and principles in historical or philosophical
speculations, impressed themselves upon his intellectual
nature. There is naturally but little to interrupt the
retirement of his life at Laleham, which was only
broken by the short tours in England or on the Conti-
nent, in which then, as afterwards, he employed his
vacations. Still, it is not without interest to dwell on
these years, the profound peace of which is contrasted
so strongly with the almost incessant agitations of his
subsequent life, and " to remain a while " (thus apply-
ing his own words on another subject) " on the high
ground where the waters which are hereafter to form
the separate streams " of his various social and theo-
logical views, "lie as yet undistinguished in their
common parent lake."

102 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

Whatever may have been the exact notions of his
future course which presented themselves to him, it is
evident that he was not insensible to the attraction of
visions of extensive influence ; and almost to his latest
hour he seems to have been conscious of the existence
of the temptation within him, and of the necessity of
contending against it. "I believe," he said, many
years afterwards, in speaking of these early struggles
to a Rugby pupil who was consulting him on the
choice of a profession, — "I believe that naturally I am
one of the most ambitious men alive ; " and " the three
great objects of human ambition," he added, to which
alone he could look as deserving the name, were " to
be the prime minister of a great kingdom, the governor
of a great empire, or the writer of works which should
live in every age and in every country." But in some
respects the loftiness of his aims made it a matter of
less difficulty to confine himself at once to a sphere
in which, whilst he felt himself well and usefully em-
ployed, he felt also that the practical business of his
daily duties acted as a check upon his own inclinations
and speculations. Accordingly, when he entered upon
his work at Laleham, he seems to have regarded it as
his work for life. " I have always thought," he writes
in 1823, "with regard to ambition, that I should like
to be aut Cczsar aut nullus ; and, as it is pretty well
settled for me that I shall not be Caesar, I am quite
content to live in peace as nullus."

It was a period, indeed, on which he used himself to
look back, even from the wider usefulness of his later

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 1 03

years, almost with a fond regret, as to the happiest
time of his life. " Seek ye first the kingdom of God
and his righteousness, and then all other things shall
be added to you," was a passage to which now more
than any other time he was in the habit of recurring
as one of peculiar truth and comfort. His situation
supplied him exactly with that union of retirement
and work which more than any other condition suited
his natural inclinations, and enabled him to keep up
more uninterrupted than was ever again in his power
the communication which he so much cherished with
his friends and relations. Without undertaking any
directly parochial charge, he was in the habit of ren-
dering constant assistance to Mr. Hearn, the curate
of the place, both in the parish church and workhouse,
and in visiting the villagers ; thus uniting with his ordi-
nary occupations greater means than he was afterwards
able to command, of familiar intercourse with his
poorer neighbors, which he always so highly valued.
Bound as he was to Laleham by all these ties, he long
loved to look upon it as his final home ; and the first
reception of the tidings of his election at Rugby was
overclouded with deep sorrow at leaving the scene of
so much happiness. Years after he had left it, he still
retained his early affection for it ; and till he had pur-
chased his house in Westmoreland, he entertained a
lingering hope that he might return to it in his old
age, when he should have retired from Rugby. Often
he would revisit it, and delighted in renewing his ac-
quaintance with all the families of the poor whom he

104 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

had known during his residence, in showing to his
children his former haunts, in looking once again on
his favorite views of the great plain of Middlesex;
the lonely walks along the quiet banks of the Thames ;
the retired garden, with its "Campus Martius " and
its " wilderness of trees," which lay behind his house,
and which had been the scenes of so many sportive
games and serious conversations ; the churchyard of
Laleham, then doubly dear to him as containing the
graves of his infant child whom he buried there in
1832, and of his mother, his aunt, and his sister
Susannah, who had long formed almost a part of his
own domestic circle, and whom he lost within a few
years after his departure to Rugby.

His general view of his work as a private tutor is
best given in his own words in 1831, to a friend who
was about to engage in a similar occupation.

" I know it has a bad name, but my wife and I always hap-
pened to be fond of it ; and if I were to leave Rugby for no
demerit of my own, I would take to it again with all the pleas-
ure in life. I enjoyed, and do enjoy, the society of youths of
seventeen or eighteen, for they are all alive in limbs and spirits
at least, if not in mind ; while in older persons the body and
spirits often become lazy and languid, without the mind gaining
any vigor to compensate for it. Do not take your work as a
dose, and I do not think you will find it nauseous. I am sure
you will not if your wife does not; and, if she is a sensible
woman, she will not either if you do not. The misery of private
tuition seems to me to consist in this, that men enter upon it
as a means to some further end ; are always impatient for the
time when they may lay it aside : whereas if you enter upon it

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 1 05

heartily as your life's business, as a man enters upon any other
profession, you are not then in danger of grudging every hour
you give to it, and thinking of how much privacy and how much
society it is robbing you; but you take to it as a matter of
course, making it your material occupation, and devote your
time to it, and then you find that it is in itself full of interest,
and keeps life's current fresh and wholesome by bringing you
in such perpetual contact with all the spring of youthful liveli-
ness. I should say, have your pupils a good deal with you,
and be as familiar with them as you possibly can. I did this
continually more and more before I left Laleham, going to
bathe with them, leaping, and all other gymnastic exercises
within my capacity, and sometimes sailing or rowing with them.
They, I believe, always liked it; and I enjoyed it myself like a
boy, and found myself constantly the better for it."

In many respects, his method at Laleham resembled
the plan which he pursued on a larger scale at Rugby.
Then, as afterwards, he had a strong sense of the duty
of protecting his charge, at whatever risk to himself,
from the presence of companions who were capable only
of exercising an evil influence over their associates ;
and, young as he was, he persisted in carrying out this
principle, and in declining to take any additional pupils
as long as he had under him any of such a character,
whom yet he did not feel himself justified in remov-
ing at once. And in answer to the request of his
friends that he would raise his terms, " I am confirmed
in my resolution not to do so," he writes in 1827, " lest
I should get the sons of very great people as my pupils
whom it is almost impossible to sophronize" In reply
to a friend in 1821, who had asked his advice in a
difficult case of dealing with a pupil, —

IO6 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

" I have no doubt," he answers, " that you have acted per-
fectly right : for lenity is seldom to be repented of ; and besides,
if you should find that it has been ill bestowed, you can have
recourse to expulsion after all. But it is clearly right to try
your chance of making an impression ; and, if you can make
any at all, it is at once your justification and encouragement to
proceed. It is very often like kicking a football up-hill : you
kick it onwards twenty yards, and it rolls back nineteen ; still,
you have gained one yard, and thus in a good many kicks you
make some progress. This, however, is on the supposition
that the pupil's fault is aKpacia and not KCLKUI : for if he laughs
behind your back at what you say to him, he will corrupt
others ; and then there is no help for it, but he must go. This
is to me all the difference : I would be as patient as I possibly
could with irresolution, unsteadiness, and fits of idleness : but
if a pupil has set his mind to do nothing, but considers all
the work as so much fudge, which he will evade if he can, I
have made up my resolution that I will send him away without
scruple ; for not to speak of the heartless trouble that such an
animal would give to myself, he is a living principle of mischief
in the house, being ready at all times to pervert his companions :
and this determination I have expressed publicly, and if I know
myself I will act upon it, and I advise you most heartily to do
the same. Thus, then, with Mr. , when he appeared peni-
tent, and made professions of amendment, you were clearly
right to give him a longer trial. If he be sincere, however
unsteady and backsliding, he will not hurt the principles of
your other pupils ; for he will not glory in his own misconduct,
which I suppose is the danger: but if you have reason to think
that the impression you made on him was only temporary, and
that it has since entirely gone away, and his own evil principles
as well as evil practices are in vigor, then I would advise you
to send him off without delay ; for then, taking the mischief he
will do to others into the account, the football rolls down
twenty-five yards to your kick of twenty, and that is a losing
game."

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. IO/

odvvrj TroAAa typoveovra irep prjdevos KpaTsetv" he
writes, "must be the feelings of many a working tutor who can-
not open the eyes of his pupils to see what knowledge is, — I:
do not mean human knowledge only, but * wisdom.1 "

"You could scarcely conceive the rare instances of igno-
rance that I have met with amongst them. One had no notion
of what was meant by an angle; another could not tell how
many Gospels there are, nor could he, after mature delibera-
tion, recollect any other names than Matthew, Mark, and Luke j
and a third holds the first concord in utter contempt, and.
makes the infinitive mood supply the place of the principal verb
in the sentence without the least suspicion of any impropriety*
My labor, therefore, is more irksome than I have ever known
it ; but none of my pupils give me any uneasiness on the most
serious points, and five of them staid the sacrament when it
was last administered. I ought constantly to impress upon my
mind how light an evil is the greatest ignorance or dulness
when compared with habits of profligacy, or even of wilful'
irregularity and riotousness.v

"I regret in your son," he says (in writing to a parent), "a.
carelessness which does not allow him to think seriously of
what he is living for, and to do what is right, not merely as a
matter of regularity, but because it is a duty. I trust you will
not think that I am meaning any thing more than my words
convey, or that what I am regretting in your son is not to be
found in nineteen out of every twenty young men of his age ;
but I conceive that you would wish me to form my desire of
what your son should be, not according to the common stand-
ard, but according to the highest, — to be satisfied with no>
less in him than I should have been anxious to find in a son of
my own. He is capable of doing a great deal, and I have not
seen any thing in him which has called for reproof since he
has been with me. I am only desirous that he should work
more lieartily, — just, in short, as he would work if he took arc
interest of himself in his own improvement. On this, of course,,
all distinction in Oxford must depend : but much more thair

I08 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

distinction depends on it ; for the difference between a useful
education, and one which does not affect the future life, rests
mainly on the greater or less activity which it has communi-
cated to the pupil's mind, whether he has learned to think, or
to act, and to gain knowledge by himself, or whether he has
merely followed passively as long as there was some one to
draw him."

It is needless to anticipate the far more extended
influence which he exercised over his Rugby scholars,
by describing in detail the impression produced upon
his pupils at Laleham. Yet the mere difference of the
relation in which he stood towards them in itself gave
a peculiar character to his earlier sphere of education,
and as such may best be described in the words of
one amongst those whom he most esteemed, Mr. Price,
who afterwards became one of his assistant masters at
Rugby.

" Nearly eighteen years have passed away since I resided at
Laleham, and I had the misfortune of being but two months as
a pupil there. I am unable, therefore, to give you a complete
picture of the Laleham life of my late revered tutor: I can
only impart to you such impressions as my brief sojourn there
has indelibly fixed in my recollection.

" The most remarkable thing which struck me at once on
joining the Laleham circle was the wonderful healthiness of
tone and feeling which prevailed in it. Every thing about me
I immediately found to be most real : it was a place where a
new-comer at once felt that a great and earnest work was going
forward. Dr. Arnold's great power as a private tutor resided
in this, that he gave such an intense earnestness to life. Every
pupil was made to feel that there was a work for him to do, —
that his happiness as well as his duty lay in doing that work

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

well. Hence, an indescribable zest was communicated to a
young man's feeling about life ; a strange joy came over him
on discovering that he had the means of being useful, and thus
of being happy; and a deep respect and ardent attachment
sprang up towards him who had taught him thus to value life
and his own self, and his work and mission in this world. All
this was founded on the breadth and comprehensiveness of
Arnold's character, as well as its striking truth and reality ; on
the unfeigned regard he had for work of all kinds, and the
sense he had of its value, both for the complex aggregate
of society, and the growth and perfection of the individual.
Thus pupils of the most different natures were keenly stimu-
lated : none felt that he was left out, or that, because he was-
not endowed with large powers of mind, there was no sphere
open to him in the honorable pursuit of usefulness. This won-
derful power of making all his pupils respect themselves,
and of awakening in them a consciousness of the duties that
God had assigned to them personally, and of the consequent
reward each should have of his labors, was one of Arnold's
most characteristic features as a trainer of youth ; he possessed
it eminently at Rugby ; but, if I may trust my own vivid recol-
lections, he had it quite as remarkably at Laleham. His hold
over all his pupils I know perfectly astonished me. It was not
so much an enthusiastic admiration for genius or learning or
eloquence which stirred within them: it was a sympathetic
thrill, caught from a spirit that was earnestly at work in the
world — whose work was healthy, sustained, and constantly car-
ried forward in the fear of God — a work that was founded on
a deep sense of its duty and its value, and was coupled with
such a true humility, such an unaffected simplicity, that others,
could not help being invigorated by the same feeling, and with
the belief that they, too, in their measure, could go and do like-
wise.

" In all this there was no excitement, no predilection for one
class of work above another, no enthusiasm for any one-sided
object, but an humble, profound, and most religious conscious-

1IO LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

siess, that work is the appointed calling of man on earth, the
*end for which his various faculties were given, the element in
rwhich his nature is ordained to develop itself, and in which his
.progressive advance towards heaven is to lie. Hence, each
pupil felt assured of Arnold's sympathy in his own particular
,-growth and character of talent : in striving to cultivate his own
/gifts, in whatever direction they might lead him, he infallibly
found Arnold not only approving, but positively and sincerely
valuing for themselves, the results he had arrived at ; and that
approbation and esteem gave a dignity and a worth, both to
.himself and his labor.

" His humility was very deeply seated ; his respect for all
knowledge sincere. A strange feeling passed over the pupil's
mind when he found great and often undue credit given him
for knowledge of which his tutor was ignorant. But this gen-
erated no conceit : the example before his eyes daily reminded
irim that it was only as a means of usefulness, as an improve-
ment of talents for his own good and that of others, that knowl-
edge was valued. He could not find comfort in the presence
of such reality, in any shallow knowledge.

" There was then, as afterwards, great simplicity in his reli-
gious character. It was no isolated part of his nature, it was a
bright and genial light shining on every branch of his life. He
took very great pains with the Divinity lessons of his pupils ;
and his lectures were admirable, and, I distinctly remember,
very highly prized for their depth and originality. Neither
generally in ordinary conversation, nor in his walks with his
pupils, was his style of speaking directly or mainly religious ;
but he was ever very ready to discuss any religious question :
' whilst the depth and truth of his nature, and the earnestness of
liis religious convictions and feelings, were ever bursting forth,
so as to make it strongly felt that his life, both outward and
inward, was rooted in God.

" In the details of daily business, the quantity of time that

lie devoted to his pupils was very remarkable. Lessons began

• at seven, and with the interval of breakfast lasted till nearly

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. Ill

three : then he would walk with his pupils, and dine at half-
past five. At seven he usually had some lesson on hand ; and
it was only when we all were gathered up in the drawing-room
after tea, amidst young men on all sides of him, that he would
commence work for himself, in writing his Sermons or Roman
History.

"Who that ever had the happiness of being at Laleham,
does not remember the lightness and joyousness of heart with
which he would romp and play in the garden, or plunge with a
boy's delight into the Thames, or the merry fun with which he
would battle with spears with his pupils ? Which of them
does not recollect how the tutor entered into his amusements
with scarcely less glee than himself ?

" But I must conclude : I do not pretend to touch on every
point. I have told you what struck me most, and I have tried
to keep away all remembrance of what he was when I knew
him better. I have confined myself to the impression Laleham
left upon me.

"B. PRICE."

TO J. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ.

(In answer to criticisms on a review of Poppo's Observationes Criticae.)
LALEHAM GARDEN, April 25, 1821.

. . . Now for your remarks on my Poppo. All clumsi-
ness in the sentences, and want of connection between the
parts, I will do my best to amend ; and the censure on verbal
criticism I will either soften or scratch out entirely, for J.
Keble objected to the same part. The translations also I will
try to improve, and indeed I am aware of their baldness. The
additions which you propose, I can make readily : but as to the
general plainness of the style, I do not think I clearly see
the fault which you allude to ; and, to say the truth, the plain-
ness, i.e., the absence of ornament and long words, is the result
of deliberate intention. At any rate, in my own case, I am sure
an attempt at ornament would make my style so absurd that

112 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

you would yourself laugh at it. I could not do it naturally;
for I have now so habituated myself to that unambitious and
plain way of writing, and absence of Latin words as much as
possible, that I could not write otherwise without manifest
affectation. Of course I do not mean to justify awkwardness
and clumsy sentences, of which I am afraid my writings are too
full, and all which I will do my best to alter wherever you have
marked them ; but any thing like puff, or verbal ornament, I
cannot bring myself to. Richness of style I admire heartily,
but this I cannot attain to for lack of power. All I could do
would be to produce a bad imitation of it, which seems to me
very ridiculous. For the same reason, I know not how to-
make the review more striking: I cannot make it so by its
own real weight and eloquence, and therefore I think I should
only make it offensive by trying to make it fine. Do consider,
what you recommend is air?uj<; aptarov, but I must do what is
apiarov kfioL. You know you always told me I should never be
a poet; and in like manner I never could be really eloquent,
for I have not the imagination or fulness of mind needful to
make me so. ...

TO REV. E. HAWKINS.

LALEHAM, Oct. 21, 1827.

I feel most sincerely obliged to you and my other friends in
Oxford for the kind interest which you show in my behalf, in
wishing to procure for me the head mastership at Rugby. Of
its being a great deal more lucrative than my present employ-
ment I have no doubt, nor of its being in itself a situation of
more extensive usefulness ; but I do doubt whether it would
be so in my hands, and how far I am fitted for the place of
head master of a large school. ... I confess that I should
very much object to undertake a charge in which I was not
invested with pretty full discretion. According to my notions
of what large schools are, founded on all I know, and all I
have ever heard of them, expulsion should be practised much

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 113

oftener than it is. Now, I know that trustees, in general, are
averse to this plan, because it has a tendency to lessen the
numbers of the school ; and they regard quantity more than
quality. In fact, my opinions on this point might, perhaps,
generally be considered as disqualifying me for the situation of
master of a great school ; yet I could not consent to tolerate
much that I know is tolerated generally, and, therefore, I should
not like to enter on an office which I could not discharge ac-
cording to my own views of what is right. I do not believe
myself, that my system would be, in fact, a cruel or a harsh
one; and I believe, that, with much care on the part of the
masters, it would be seldom necessary to proceed to the ratio
ultima : only I would have it clearly understood, that I would
mast unscrupulously resort to it, at whatever inconvenience,
where there was a perseverance in any habit inconsistent with
a boy's duties.

TO REV. E. HAWKINS.

LALEHAM, Dec. 28, 1827.

Your kind little note ought not to have remained thus long
unanswered, especially as you have a most particular claim on
my thanks for your active kindness in the whole business, and
for your character of me to Sir H. Halford, that I was likely
to improve generally the system of public education, a state-
ment which Sir H. Halford told me had weighed most strongly
in my favor. You would not, I am sure, have recommended
me, if you had supposed that I should alter things violently or
for the pleasure of altering ; but, as I have at different times
expressed in conversation my disapprobation of much of the
existing system, I find that some people expect that I am going
to sweep away root and branch, quod absit / I need not tell
you how wholly unexpected this result has been to us, and I
hope I need not say also what a solemn and almost overwhelm-
ing responsibility I feel is imposed on me. I would hope to
have the prayers of my friends, together with my own, for a

114 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

supply of that true wisdom which is required for such a busi-
ness. To be sure, how small in comparison is the importance
of my teaching the boys to read Greek, and how light would be
a schoolmaster's duty if that were all of it ! Yet, if my health
and strength continue as they have been for the last eight years,
I do not fear the labor, and really enjoy the prospect of it.
I am so glad that we are likely to meet soon in Oxford.

TO THE REV. JOHN TUCKER.

LALEHAM, August, 1828.

I am inclined to write to you once again before we leave
Laleham, as a sort of farewell from this dear place ; and you
shall answer it with a welcome to Rugby. You fancy us already
at Rugby ; and so does J. Keble, from whom I received a very
kind letter some time since, directed to me there. But we do
not move till Tuesday, when we go, fourteen souls, to Oxford,
having taken the whole coach ; and on Wednesday we hope to
reach Rugby, having in like manner secured the whole Leices-
ter coach from Oxford to Rugby. Our goods and chattels,
under convoy of our gardener, are at this time somewhere on
the Grand Junction Canal, and will reach Rugby, I hope, this
-evening. The poor house here is sadly desolate, — all the car-
pets up, half the furniture gone, and signs of removal every-
where visible. And so ends the first act of my life since I
arrived at manhood. For the last eight years it has been a
period of as unruffled happiness as I should think could ever
foe experienced by man. Mary's illness, in 1821, is almost its
only dark spot ; — and how was that softened and comforted !
It is almost a fearful consideration ; and yet there is a super-
stitious notion, and an unbelieving one too, which cannot re-
ceive God's mercies as his free gift, but will always be looking
out for something wherewith to purchase them. An humbling
consideration much rather it is and ought to be : yet all life is
humbling, if we think upon it ; and our greatest mercies, which

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 115

we sometimes least think of, are the most humbling of all. . , .
The Rugby prospect I contemplate with a very strong interest :
the work I am not afraid of, if I can get my proper exercise ;
but I want absolute play, like a boy, and neither riding nor
walking will make up for my leaping-pole and gallows, and
bathing, when the youths used to go with me, and I felt com-
pletely for the time a boy, as they were. It is this entire relax-
ation, I think, at intervals, such again as my foreign tours have
afforded, that gives me so keen an appetite for my work at
other times, and has enabled me to go through it, not only with
no fatigue, but with a sense of absolute pleasure. I believe
that I am going to publish a volume of Sermons. You will
think me crazed perhaps ; but I have two reasons for it, — chiefly,
the repeated exhortations of several individuals for the last
three or four years ; but these would not alone have urged me
to it, did I not wish to state, for my own sake, what my opin-
ions really are, on points where I know they have been griev-
ously misrepresented. Whilst I lived here in Laleham, my
opinions mattered to nobody: but I know, that, while I was
a candidate for Rugby, it was said in Oxford that I did not
preach the gospel, nor even touch upon the great doctrines of
Christianity in my sermons ; and, if this same impression be
prevalent now, it will be mischievous to the school in a high
degree. Now, if what I really do preach be to any man's
notions not the gospel, I cannot help it, and must be content
to abide by the consequences of his opinion ; but I do not want
to be misunderstood, and accused of omitting things which I
do not omit.

TO THE REV. GEORGE CORNISH.

RUGBY, Aug. 16, 1828.

... If I can do my work as I ought to do it, we shall have
every reason to be thankful for the change. I must not, it is
true, think of dear old Laleham, and all that we have left there,
or the perfect peace of our eight years of wedded life passed

Il6 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

there together. It is odd that both you and I should now for
the first time in our lives be moving from our parents' neigh-
borhood ; but in this respect our happiness was very uncom-
mon : and to me altogether, Laleham was so like a place of
premature rest, that I believe I ought to be sincerely thankful
that I am called to a scene of harder and more anxious labor.
. . . The boys come back next Saturday week. So here begins
the second act of our lives. May God bless it to us, and make
it help forward the great end of all !

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 1 1/

CHAPTER III.

SCHOOL LIFE AT RUGBY.

IT would be useless to give any chronological de-
tails of a life so necessarily monotonous as that of the
head master of a public school, and it is accordingly
only intended to describe the general system which
Dr. Arnold pursued during the fourteen years he was
at Rugby. Yet some apology may seem to be due
for the length of a chapter which to the general reader
must be comparatively deficient in interest. Some-
thing must, indeed, be forgiven to the natural inclina-
tion to dwell on those recollections of his life which
to his pupils are the most lively and the most recent
— something to the almost unconscious tendency to
magnify those scenes which are most nearly connected
with what is most endeared to one's self. But, inde-
pendently of any local or personal considerations, it
has been felt, that, if any part of Dr. Arnold's work
deserved special mention, it was his work at Rugby ;
and that, if it was to be of any use to those of his own
profession who would take any interest in it, it could
only be made so by a full and minute account.

Those who look back upon the state of English
education in the year 1827, must remember how the

Il8 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

feeling of dissatisfaction with existing institutions which
had begun in many quarters to display itself, had
already directed considerable attention to the condi-
tion of public schools. The range of classical reading,
in itself confined, and with no admixture of other in-
formation, had been subject to vehement attacks from
the liberal party generally, on the ground of its alleged
narrowness and inutility. And the more undoubted
evil of the absence of systematic attempts to give a
more directly Christian character to what constituted
the education of the whole English gentry, was becom-
ing more and more a scandal in the eyes of religious
men, who at the close of the last century and the
beginning of this, — Wilberforce, for example, and
Bowdler, — had lifted up their voices against it. A
complete reformation, or a complete destruction of
the whole system, seemed, to many persons, sooner
or later to be inevitable. The difficulty, however, of
making the first step, where the alleged objection to
alteration was its impracticability, was not to be easily
surmounted. The mere resistance to change which
clings to old institutions, was in itself a considerable
obstacle, and in the case of some of the public schools,
from the nature of their constitution, in the first in-
stance almost insuperable ; and whether amongst those
who were engagea in the existing system, or those who
were most vehemently opposed to it, for opposite but
obvious reasons, it must have been extremely difficult
to find a man who would attempt, or, if he attempted,
carry through, any extensive improvement.

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 119

It was at this juncture that Dr. Arnold was elected
head master of a school, which, whilst it presented a
fair average specimen of the public schools at that
time, yet by its constitution imposed fewer shackles
on its head, and offered a more open field for altera-
tion, than was the case at least with Eton or Winches-
ter. The post itself, in spite of the publicity, and to
a certain degree formality, which it entailed upon him,
was in many respects remarkably suited to his natural
tastes, — to his love of tuition, which had now grown
so strongly upon him, that he declared sometimes that
he could hardly live without such employment ; to the
vigor and spirits which fitted him rather to deal with
the young than the old ; to the desire of carrying out
his favorite ideas, of uniting things secular with things
spiritual, and of introducing the highest principles of
action into regions comparatively uncongenial to their
reception.

Even his general interest in public matters was not
without its use in his new station. Many, indeed, both
of his admirers and of his opponents, used to lament
that a man with such views and pursuits should be
placed in such a situation. " What a pity," it was said
on the one hand, " that a man fit to be a statesman,
should be employed in teaching school-boys." " What
a shame," it was said on the oth*r hand, " that the
head master of Rugby should be employed in writing
essays and pamphlets." But even had there been no
connection between the two spheres of his interest,
and had the inconvenience resulting from his public

120 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

prominence been far greater than it was, it would have
been the necessary price of having him at all in that
place. He would not have been himself had he not
felt and written as he did ; and he could not have en-
dured to live under the grievance of remaining silent
on subjects on which he believed it to be his most
sacred duty to speak what he thought.

As it was, however, the one sphere played into the
other. Whatever labor he bestowed on his literary
works was only part of that constant progress of self-
education which he thought essential to the right dis-
charge of his duties as a teacher. Whatever interest
he felt in the struggles of the political and ecclesiasti-
cal world re-acted on his interest in the school, and
invested it in his eyes with a new importance. When
he thought of the social evils of the country, it awak-
ened a corresponding desire to check the thoughtless
waste and selfishness of school-boys ; a corresponding
sense of the aggravation of those evils by the insolence
and want of sympathy too frequently shown by the
children of the wealthier classes towards the lower
orders ; a corresponding desire that they should there
imbibe the first principles of reverence to law, and
regard for the poor, which the spirit of the age seemed
to him so little to encourage. When he thought of the
evils of the Church, he would " turn from the thought
of the general temple in ruins, and see whether they
could not, within the walls of their own little particu-
lar congregation," endeavor to realize what he believed
to be its true idea ; " what use they could make of

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 121

the vestiges of it, still left amongst themselves, — com-
mon reading of the Scriptures, common prayer, and
the communion." (Sermons, vol. iv. pp. 266, 316.)
Thus, " whatever of striking good or evil happened in
any part of the wide range of English dominion," —
" declared on what important scenes some of his own
scholars might be called upon to enter," — "whatever
new and important things took place in the world of
thought," suggested the hope " that they, when they
went forth amidst the strifes of tongues and of minds,
might be endowed with the spirit of wisdom and
power." (Sermons, vol. v. p. 405.) And even in the
details of the school, it would be curious to trace how
he recognized in the peculiar vices of boys, the same
evils which, when full grown, became the source of so
much social mischief; how he governed the school
precisely on the same principles as he would have
governed a great empire ; how constantly, to his own
mind or to his scholars, he exemplified the highest
truths of theology and philosophy in the simplest re-
lations of the boys towards each other or towards
him.

In entering upon his office, he met with difficulties,
many of which have since passed away, but which
must be borne in mind if points are here dwelt upon
that have now ceased to be important, but were by no
means insignificant or obvious when he came to Rugby.
Nor did his system at once attain its full maturity. He
was a long time feeling his way amongst the various
institutions which he formed or invented ; he was con-

122 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

stantly striving after an ideal standard of perfection
which he was conscious that he had never attained ;
to the improvements which, in a short time, began to
take place in other schools, —to those at 'Harrow,
under his friend Dr. Longley, and to those at Win-
chester, under Dr. Moberly, to which he alluded in
one of his later sermons (vol. v. p. 150), — he often
looked as models for himself; to suggestions from
persons very much younger than himself, not unfre-
quently from his former pupils, with regard to the
course of reading, or to alterations in his manner of
preaching, or to points of discipline, he would often
listen with the greatest deference. His own mind was
constantly devising new measures for carrying out his
several views. "The school," he said on first coming,
" is quite enough to employ any man's love of reform ;
and it is much pleasanter to think of evils which you
may yourself hope to relieve, than those with regard
to which you can give nothing but vain wishes and
opinions." "There is enough of Toryism in my na-
ture," he said, on evils being mentioned to him in the
place, " to make me very apt to sleep contentedly over
things as they are : and therefore I hold it to be most
true kindness when any one directs my attention to
points in the school which are alleged to be going on
ill."

The perpetual succession of changes which resulted
from this, was by many objected to as excessive, and
calculated to endanger the stability of his whole sys-
tem. "He wakes every morning," it was said of him,

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 123

" with the impression that every thing is an open ques-
tion." But, rapid as might be the alterations to which
the details of his system were subjected, his general
principles remained fixed. The unwillingness which
he had, even in common life, to act in any individual
case without some general law to which he might refer
it, ran through every thing; and at times it would
almost seem as if he invented universal rules with the
express object of meeting particular cases. Still, if in
smaller matters this gave an occasional impression of
fancifulness or inconsistency, it was, in greater matters,,
one chief cause of the confidence which he inspired.
Amidst all the plans that came before him, he felt,
and he made others feel, that, whatever might be the
merits of the particular question at issue, there were
principles behind which lay far more deeply seated
than any mere question of school government, which,
he was ready to carry through at whatever cost, and
from which no argument or menace could move him.

Of the mere external administration of the school,
little need here be said. Many difficulties which he
encountered were alike provoked and subdued by the
peculiarities of his own character. The vehemence
with which he threw himself into a contest against
evil, and the confidence with which he assailed it,
though it carried him through perplexities to which
a more cautious man would have yielded, led him to
disregard interests and opinions which a less earnest
or a less sanguine reformer would have treated with
greater consideration. His consciousness of his own.

124 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

integrity, and his contempt for worldly advantage,
sometimes led him to require from others more than
might be reasonably expected from them, and to adopt
measures which the world at large was sure to misin-
terpret ; yet these very qualities, in proportion as they
became more appreciated, ultimately secured for him
a confidence beyond what could have been gained by
the most deliberate circumspection. But, whatever
were the temporary exasperations and excitements
thus produced in his dealings with others, they were
gradually removed by the increasing control over him-
self and his work which he acquired in later years.
The readiness which he showed to acknowledge a
fault when once convinced of it, as well as to persevere
in kindness, even when he thought himself injured,
succeeded in healing breaches which, with a less forgiv-
ing or less honest temper, would have been irreparable.
His union of firmness with tenderness had the same
effect in the settlement of some of the perplexities of
.his office which in others would have resulted from
'art and management ; and even his work as a school-
master cannot be properly appreciated without remem-
rbering how, in the end of his career, he rallied round
:him the public feeling, which in its beginning and
middle, as will appear farther on, had been so widely
estranged from him.

With regard to the trustees of the school, entirely
amicable as were his usual relations with them, and
grateful as he felt to them for their active support and
.personal friendliness, he from the first maintained, that,

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 12$

in the actual working of the school, he must be com-
pletely independent, and that their remedy, if they
were dissatisfied, was not interference, but dismissal.
On this condition he took the post ; and any attempt
to control either his administration of the school, or
his own private occupations, he felt bound to resist
"as a duty," he said on one occasion, "not only to
himself, but to the master of every foundation school
in England.'*

Of his intercourse with the assistant masters it is for
obvious reasons impossible to speak in any detail.
Yet it would be injustice alike to them and to him, not
to bear in mind how earnestly he dwelt on their co-
operation as an essential part of his own government
of the school. It was one of his main objects to increase
in all possible ways their importance. By raising their
salaries he obviated the necessity of their taking any
parochial duty which should divert their attention from
the school, and procured from the bishop of the dio-
cese the acknowledgment of their situations as titles,
for orders. A system of weekly councils was estab-
lished, in which all school-matters were discussed ;
and he seldom or never acted in any important point
of school discipline without consulting them. It was
his endeavor, partly by placing the boarding-houses
under their care, partly by an elaborate system of pri-
vate tuition, which was introduced with this express
purpose, to encourage a pastoral and friendly relation
between them and the several classes of boys intrusted
to them. What he was in his department, in short,.

126 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

he wished every one of them to be in theirs ; and
nothing rejoiced him more than to hear of instances
in which he thought that boys were sent to the school
for the sake of his colleagues' instructions rather than
of his own. It was his labor to inspire them with
the views of education and of life by which he was
possessed himself; and the bond thus gradually
formed, especially when in his later time several of
those who had been his pupils became his colleagues,
grew deeper and stronger with each successive year
that they passed in the place. Out of his own family,
there was no circle of which he was so completely the
animating principle, as amongst those who co-operated
with him in the great practical work of his life ; none
in which his loss was so keenly felt to be irreparable,
or his example so instinctively regarded in the light
of a living spring of action and a source of solemn
responsibility, as amongst those who were called to
continue their labors in the sphere and on the scene
which had been ennobled to them by his counsels and
his presence.1

1 His views will perhaps be best explained by the two following letters: —

LETTER OF INQUIRY FOR A MASTER.

..." What I want is a man who is a Christian and a gentleman, an active
man, and one who has common sense, and understands boys. I do not so
much care about scholarship, as he will have immediately under him the lowest
forms in the school; but yet, on second thoughts, I do care about it very
much, because his pupils maybe in the highest forms; and, besides, I think
that even the elements are best taught by a man who has a thorough knowl-
edge of the matter. However, if one must give way, I prefer activity of mind
and an interest in his work to high scholarship ; for the one may be acquired
far more easily than the other. I should wish it also to be understood, that the

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. I2/

But whatever interest attaches to the more external
circumstances of his administration, and to his rela-
tions with others, who were concerned in it, is, of
course, centred in his own personal government of the
boys. The natural effect of his concentration of inter-
est on what he used to call " our great self," the school,
was that the separate existence of the school was in
return almost merged in him. This was not indeed
his own intention; but it was precisely because he
thought so much of the institution, and so little of
himself, that, in spite of his efforts to make it work
independently of any personal influence of his own,

new master may be called upon to take boarders in his house; it being my
intention for the future to require this of all masters as I see occasion, that so
in time the boarding-houses may die a natural death. . , . With this to offer,
I think I have a right to look rather high for the man whom I fix upon ; and it
is my great object to get here a society of intelligent, gentlemanly, and active
men, who may permanently keep up the character of the school, and make
it * vile damnum,' if I were to break my neck to-morrow."

LETTER TO A MASTER ON HIS APPOINTMENT.

..." The qualifications which I deem essential to the due performance of
a master's duties here may, in brief, be expressed as the spirit of a Christian
and a gentleman, — that a man should enter his business, not e« Trapepyov, but
as a substantive and most important duty ; that he should devote himself to it
as the especial branch of the ministerial calling which he has chosen to follow
— that belonging to a great public institution, and standing in a public and
conspicuous situation, he should study things 'lovely and of good report;'
that is, that he should be public-spirited, liberal, and entering heartily into the
interest, honor, and general respectability and distinction of the society which
he has joined ; and that he should have sufficient vigor of mind, and thirst for
knowledge, to persist in adding to his own stores without neglecting the full
improvement of those whom he is teaching. I think our masterships here
offer a noble field of duty, and I would not bestow them on any one whom I
thought would undertake them without entering into the spirit of our system
heart and hand."

128 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

it became so thoroughly dependent upon him, and so
thoroughly penetrated with his spirit. From one end
of it to the other, whatever defects it had were his
defects : whatever excellences it had were his excel-
lences. It was not the master who was beloved or
disliked for the sake of the school, but the school
which was beloved or disliked for the sake of the mas-
ter. Whatever peculiarity of character was impressed
on the scholars whom it sent forth, was derived, not
from the genius of the place, but from the genius of
the man. Throughout, whether in the school itself,
or in its after-effects, the one image that we have
before us is not Rugby, but ARNOLD.

What was his great object has already appeared
from his letters ; namely, \ the hope of making the
school a place of really Christian education,! — words
which in his mouth meant something very different
from the general professions which every good teacher
must be supposed to make, and which no teacher,
even in the worst times of English education, could
have openly ventured to disclaim, but which it is ex-
ceedingly difficult so to explain, as that they shall not
seem to exceed or fall short of the truth.

It was not an attempt merely to give more theologi-
cal instruction, or to introduce sacred words into
school admonitions : there may have been some oc-
casions for religious advice that might have been
turned to more advantage, some religious practices
which might have been more constantly or effectually
encouraged. His design arose out of the very nature

y '

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. I2Q

of his office : the relation of an instructor to his pupils
was to him, like all the other relations of human life,
only in a healthy state when subordinate to their com-
mon relation to God. " The business of a schoolmas-
ter," he used to say, "no less than that of a parish
minister, is the cure of souls." The idea of a Chris-
tian school, again, was to him the natural result, so to
speak, of the very idea of a school in itself, exactly
as the idea of a Christian state seemed to him to be
involved in the very idea of a state itself. The intel-
lectual training was not for a moment underrated, and
the machinery of the school was left to have its own
way. But he looked upon the whole as bearing on
the advancement of the one end of all instruction and
education : the boys were still treated as school-boys,
but as school-boys who must grow up to be Christian
men; whose age did not prevent their faults from
being sins, or their excellences from being noble and
Christian virtues ; whose situation did not of itself
make the application of Christian principles to their
daily lives an impracticable vision.

His education, in short, it was once observed amidst
the vehement outcry by which he used to be assailed,
was not (according to the popular phrase) based upon
religion, but was itself religious. It was this chiefly
which gave a oneness to his work amidst a great vari-
ety of means and occupations, and a steadiness to the
general system amidst its almost unceasing change.
It was this which makes it difficult to separate one
part of his work from another, and which often made

130 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

it impossible for his pupils to say, in after-life, of much
that had influenced them, whether they had derived it
from what was spoken in school, in the pulpit, or in
private. And, therefore, when either in direct reli-
gious teaching, or on particular occasions, Christian
principles were expressly introduced by him, they had
not the appearance of a rhetorical flourish, or of a
temporary appeal to the feelings ; they were looked
upon as the natural expression of what was constantly
implied : it was felt that he had the power, in which
so many teachers have been deficient, of saying what
he did mean, and of not saying what he did not mean,
— the power of doing what was right, and speaking
what was true, and thinking what was good, independ-
ently of any professional or conventional notions that
so to act, speak, or think was becoming or expedient.
It was not merely an abstract school, but an English
public school, which he looked upon as the sphere in
which this was to be effected. There was something
to him, at the very outset, full of interest in a great
place of national education, such as he considered
a public school to be.

" There is," he said, " or there ought to be, something very
ennobling in being connected with an establishment at once
ancient and magnificent, where all about us, and all the associa-
tions belonging to the objects around us, should be great, splen-
did, and elevating. What an individual ought and often does
derive from the feeling that he is born of an old and illustrious
race, from being familiar from his childhood with the walls
and trees which speak of the past no less than of the present,
and make both full of images of greatness, this, in an inferior

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 131

degree, belongs to every member of an ancient and celebrated
place of education. In this respect, every one of us has a re-
sponsibility imposed upon him, which I wished that \re more
considered." (Sermons, vol. iii. p. 210.)

This feeling of itself dictated the preservation of the
old school constitution as far as it was possible ; and
he was very careful not to break through any customs
which connected the institution, however slightly, with
the past. But, in this constitution, there were pecul-
iarities of far greater importance in his eyes for good
or evil, than any mere imaginative associations, — the
peculiarities which distinguish the English public-
school system from almost every other system of edu-
cation in Europe, and which are all founded on the
fact that a large number of boys are left for a large
portion of their time to form an independent society
of their own, in which the influence that they exercise
over each other is far greater than can possibly be
exercised by the masters, even if multiplied beyond
their present number.

How keenly he felt the evils resulting from this sys-
tem, and the difficulty of communicating to it a really
Christian character, will be evident to any one who
knows the twelfth sermon in his second volume, in
which he unfolded, at the beginning of his career, the
causes which had led good men to declare that " pub-
lic schools are the seats and nurseries of vice ; " or the
three sermons on " Christian Schools " in his fifth vol-
ume, in which, with the added experience of ten years,
he analyzed the six evils by which he " supposed that

132 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

great schools were likely to be corrupted, and to be
changed from the likeness of God's temple to that of a
den of thieves." (Vol. v. p. 74.)

Sometimes he would be led to doubt whether it
were really compatible with the highest principles of
education : sometimes he would seem to have an ear-
nest and almost impatient desire to free himself from
it. Still, on the whole, it was always on a reformation,
not on an overthrow, of the existing constitution of the
school that he endeavored to act. "Another sys-
tem," he said, "may be better in itself; but I am
placed in this system, and am bound to try what I
can make of it."

With his usual undoubting confidence in what he
believed to be a general law of Providence, he based
his whole management of the school on his early-
formed and yearly-increasing conviction, that what he
had to look for, both intellectually and morally, was
not performance, but promise ; that the very freedom
and independence of school-life, which in itself he
thought so dangerous, might be made the best prepa-
ration for Christian manhood : and he did not hesitate
to apply to his scholars the principle which seemed
to him to have been adopted in the training of the
childhood of the human race itself. He shrunk from
pressing on the conscience of boys rules of action
which he felt they were not yet able to bear, and from
enforcing actions which, though right in themselves,
would in boys be performed from wrong motives.

Keenly as he felt the risk and fatal consequences

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 133

of the failure of this trial, still it was his great, some-
times his only, support, to believe that " the character
is braced amid such scenes to a greater beauty and
firmness than it ever can attain without enduring and
witnessing them. Our work here would be absolutely
unendurable if we did not bear in mind that we should
look forward as well as backward — if we did not re-
member that the victory of fallen man lies not in inno-
cence, but in tried virtue." (Sermons, vol. iv. p. 7.) " I
hold fast," he said, " to the great truth, that ' blessed
is he that overcometh ; ' " and he writes in 1837,
" Of all the painful things connected with my employ-
ment, nothing is equal to the grief of seeing a boy
come to school innocent and promising, and tracing
the corruption of his character from the influence of
the temptations around him, in the very place which
ought to have strengthened and improved it. But in
most cases, those who come with a character of posi-
tive good are benefited : it is the neutral and indeci-
sive characters which are apt to be decided for evil
by schools, as they would be, in fact, by any other
temptation."

But this very feeling led him with the greater eager-
ness to catch at every means by which the trial might
be shortened or alleviated. " Can the change from
childhood to manhood be hastened, without prema-
turely exhausting the faculties of body or mind?"
(Sermons, vol. iv. p. 19) was one of the chief questions
on which his mind was constantly at work, and which,
in the judgment of some, he was disposed to answer

134 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

too readily in the affirmative. It was wkh the elder
boys, of course, that he chiefly acted on this principle ;
but with all above the very young ones, he trusted to
it more or less. Firmly as he believed that a time of
trial was inevitable, he believed no less firmly that it
might be passed at public schools sooner than under
other circumstances ; and in proportion as he disliked
the assumption of a false manliness in boys, was his
desire to cultivate in them true manliness, as the only
step to something higher, and to dwell on earnest
principle and moral thoughtfulness as the great and
distinguishing mark between good and evil. Hence
his wish, that as much as possible should be done by
the boys, and nothing for them ; hence arose his prac-
tice, in which his own delicacy of feeling and upright-
ness of purpose powerfully assisted him, of treating
the boys as gentlemen and reasonable beings, of mak-
ing them respect themselves by the mere respect he
showed to them, of showing that he appealed and
trusted to their own common sense and conscience.
Lying, for example, to the masters, he made a great
moral offence ; placing implicit confidence in a boy's
assertion, and then, if a falsehood was discovered,
punishing it severely — in the upper part of the school,
when persisted in, with expulsion. Even with the
lower forms, he never seemed to be on the watch for
boys ; and in the higher forms, any attempt at further
proof of an assertion was immediately checked : " If
you say so, that is quite enough — of course I believe
your word ; " and there grew up in consequence a

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 135

general feeling that " it was a shame to tell Arnold
a lie — he always believes one."

Perhaps the liveliest representation of this general
spirit, as distinguished from its exemplification in par-
ticular parts of the discipline and instruction, would
be formed by recalling his manner as he appeared in
the great school, where the boys used to meet when
the whole school was assembled collectively, and not
in its different forms or classes. Then, whether on
his usual entrance every morning to prayers before the
first lesson, or on the more special emergencies which
might require his presence, he seemed to stand before
them, not merely as the head master, but as the rep-
resentative of the school. There he spoke to them
as members together with himself of the same great
institution, whose character and reputation they had
to sustain as well as he. He would dwell on the satis-
faction he had in being head of a society where noble
and honorable feelings were encouraged, or on the
disgrace which he felt in hearing of acts of disorder
or violence, such as in the humbler ranks of life would
render them amenable to the laws of their country ;
or, again, on the trust which he placed in their honor
as gentlemen, and the baseness of any instance in
which it was abused. "Is this a Christian school ?"
he indignantly asked at the end of one of those ad-
dresses, in which he had spoken of an extensive dis-
play of bad feeling amongst the boys, and then added,
" I cannot remain here if all is to be carried on by
constraint and force : if I am to be here as a jailer,

136 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

I will resign my office at once." And few scenes can
be recorded more characteristic of him than on one
of these occasions, when, in consequence of a disturb-
ance, he had been obliged to send away several boys,
and when, in the midst of the general spirit of discon-
tent which this excited, he stood in his place before
the assembled school, and said, " It is not necessary
that this should be a school of three hundred, or one
hundred, or of fifty boys ; but it is necessary that ir
should be a school of Christian gentlemen/'

The means of carrying out these principles were, of
course, various : they may, however, for the sake of
convenience, be viewed under the divisions of the gen-
eral discipline of the school, the system of instruction,
the chapel services, and his own personal intercourse
and influence.

I. In considering his general management of the
discipline of the school, it will only be possible to
touch on its leading features.

i . He at once made a great alteration in the whole
system of punishments in the higher part of the school,
" keeping it as much as possible in the background,
and by kindness and encouragement attracting the
good and noble feelings of those with whom he had
to deal." As this appears more distinctly elsewhere,
it is needless to enlarge upon it here ; but a few words
may be necessary to explain the view with which, for
the younger part of the school, he made a point of
maintaining, to a certain extent, the old discipline
of public schools.

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 137

" The beau-ideal of school discipline with regard to young
boys would seem to be this, that whilst corporal punishment
was retained on principle, as fitly answering to and marking
the naturally inferior state of boyhood, and, therefore, as con-
veying no peculiar degradation to persons in such a state, we
should cherish and encourage to the utmost all attempts made
by the several boys, as individuals, to escape from the natural
punishment of their age, by rising above its naturally low tone
of principle."

Flogging, therefore, for the younger part, he retained ;
but it was confined to moral offences, such as lying,
drinking, and habitual idleness; while his aversion to
inflicting it rendered it still less frequent in practice
than it would have been according to the rule he had
laid down for it. But in answer to the argument used
in a liberal journal, that it was even for these offences
and for this age degrading, he replied with character-
istic emphasis, —

" I knowVell of what feeling this is the expression : it origi-
nates in that proud notion of personal independence which is
neither reasonable nor Christian, but essentially barbarian.
It visited Europe with all the curses of the age of chivalry, and
is threatening us now with those of Jacobinism. ... At an
age when it is almost impossible to find a true manly sense of
the degradation of guilt or faults, where is the wisdom of en-
couraging a fantastic sense of the degradation of personal cor-
rection ? What can be more false, or more adverse to the
simplicity, sobriety, and humbleness of mind, which are the
best ornament of youth, and the best promise of a noble man-
hood ? "

2. But his object was, of course, far higher than to
check particular vices. "What I want to see in the

138 LIFE OF 7'HOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

school," he said, " and what I cannot find, is an ab-
horrence of evil : I always think of the psalm, ' Nei-
ther doth he abhor any thing that is evil.' " Amongst
all the causes which, in his judgment, contributed to
the absence of this feeling, and to the moral childish-
ness, which he considered the great curse of public
schools, the chief seemed to him to lie in the spirit
which was there encouraged of combination, of com-
panionship, of excessive deference to the public opin-
ion prevalent in the school. Peculiarly repugnant as
this spirit was at once to his own reverence for lawful
authority, and to his dislike of servile submission to
unlawful authority; fatal as he deemed it to all ap-
proach to sympathy between himself and his scholars,
to all free and manly feeling in individual boys, to all
real and permanent improvement of the institution it-
self,— it gave him more pain when brought prominently
before him, than any other evil in the school. At the
very sight of a knot of vicious or careless boys gathered
together around the great schoolhouse fire, " It makes
me think," he would say, " that I see the Devil in the
midst of them." From first to last, it was the great
subject to which all his anxiety converged. No half-
year ever passed without his preaching upon it ; he
turned it over and over in every possible point of view ;
he dwelt on it as the one master- fault of all. "If the
spirit of Elijah were to stand in the midst of us, and
we were to ask him, ' What shall we do then ? ' his
answer would be, ' Fear not, nor heed one another's
voices, but fear and heed the voice of God only,' "
(MS. sermon on Luke iii. 10. 1833.)

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 139

Against this evil he felt that no efforts of good in-
dividual example, or of personal sympathy with indi-
vidual masters, could act effectually, unless there were
something to counteract it constantly amongst the
boys themselves.

" He, therefore, who wishes " (to use his own words) " really
to improve public education, would do well to direct his atten-
tion to this point, and to consider how there can be infused
into a society of boys such elements as, without being too dis-
similar to coalesce thoroughly with the rest, shall yet be so
superior as to raise the character of the whole. It would be
absurd to say that any school has as yet fully solved this prob-
lem. I am convinced, however, that in the peculiar relation
of the highest form to the rest of the boys, such as it exists
in our great public schools, there is to be found the best
means of answering it. This relation requires, in many re-
spects, to be improved in its character ; some of its features
should be softened, others elevated ; but here, and here only,
is the engine which can effect the end desired." (Journ. Ed.
p. 292.)

In other words, he determined to use, and to im-
prove to the utmost, the existing machinery of the
Sixth Form, and of fagging; understanding by the
Sixth Form, the thirty boys who composed the highest,
class, — " those who, having risen to the highest form
in the school, will probably be at once the oldest and
the strongest and the cleverest, and, if the school be
well ordered, the most respectable in application and
general character;" and by fagging, " the power
given by the supreme authorities of the school to the
Sixth Form, to be exercised by them over the lower

I4O LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

boys, for the sake of securing a regular government
amongst the boys themselves, and avoiding the evils
of anarchy, in other words, of the lawless tyranny of
physical strength." (Journ. Ed. pp. 286, 287.)

In many points, he took the institution as he found
it, and as he remembered it at Winchester. The re-
sponsibility of checking bad practices without the in-
tervention of the masters, the occasional settlement of
difficult cases of school government, the subjection
of brute force to some kind of order, involved in the
maintenance of such an authority, had been more or
less produced under the old system, both at Rugby
and elsewhere. But his zeal in its defence, and his
confident reliance upon it as the keystone of his whole
government, were eminently characteristic of himself.
It was a point, moreover, on which the spirit of the
age set strongly and increasingly against him, on which
there was a general tendency to yield to the popular
outcry, and on which the clamor, that at one time
assailed him, was ready to fasten as a subject where
all parties could concur in their condemnation. But
he was immovable ; and though, on his first coming,
he had felt himself called upon rather to restrain the
authority of the Sixth Form from abuses, than to guard
it from encroachments, yet, now that the whole system
was denounced as cruel and absurd, he delighted to
stand forth as its champion. The power, which was
most strongly condemned, of personal chastisement
vested in the Praepostors over those who resisted their
authority, he firmly maintained as essential to the gen-

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 14!

eral support of the good order of the place; and
there was no obloquy which he would not undergo in
the protection of a boy who had by due exercise of
this discipline made himself obnoxious to the school,
the parents, or the public.

But the importance which he attached to it arose
from his regarding it not only as an efficient engine of
discipline, but as the chief means of creating a respect
for moral and intellectual excellence, and of diffusing
his own influence through the mass of the school.
Whilst he made the Praepostors rely upon his support
in all just use of their authority, as well as on his
severe judgment of all abuse of it, he endeavored also
to make them feel that they were actually fellow- work-
ers with him for the highest good of the school, upon
the highest principles and motives — that they had,
with him, a moral responsibility and a deep interest in
the real welfare of the place. Occasionally during his
whole stay, and regularly at the beginning or end of
every half-year during his later years, he used to make
short addresses to them on their duties, or on the gen-
eral state of the school, one of which, as an illustra-
tion of his general mode of speaking and acting with
them, it has been thought worth while to give, as
nearly as his pupils could remember it, in the very
words he used. After making a few remarks to them
on their work in the lessons, "I will now/' he pro-
ceeded, " say a few words to you, as I promised.
Speaking to you, as to young men who can enter into
what I say, I wish you to feel that you have another

142 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

duty to perform, holding the situation that you do
in the school : of the importance of this, I wish you
all to feel sensible, and of the enormous influence
you possess, in ways in which we cannot, for good or
for evil, on all below you ; and I wish you to see fully
how many and great are the opportunities offered
to you here of doing good — good, too, of lasting
benefit to yourselves as well as to others ; there is no
place where you will find better opportunities for some
time to come, and you will then have reason to look
back to your life here with the greatest pleasure.
You will soon find, when you change your life here for
that at the universities, how very few in comparison
they are there, however willing you may then be, — at
any rate during the first part of your life there. That
there is good, working 'in the school, I most fully be-
lieve, and we cannot feel too thankful for it : in many
individual instances, in different parts of the school, I
have seen the change from evil to good — to mention
instances would, of course, be wrong. The state of the
school is a subject of congratulation to us all, but only
so far as to encourage us to increased exertions ; and I
am sure we ought all to feel it a subject of most sincere
thankfulness to God \ but we must not stop here ; we
must exert ourselves with earnest prayer to God for its
continuance. And what I have often said before, I
repeat now : what we must look for here is, first, reli-
gious and moral principles ; secondly, gentlemanly
conduct ; thirdly, intellectual ability."

Nothing, accordingly, so shook his hopes of doing

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 143

good, as weakness or misconduct in the Sixth. " You
should feel," he said, " like officers in the army or
navy, whose want of moral courage would, indeed, be
thought cowardice." "When I have confidence in
the Sixth," was the end of one of his farewell ad-
dresses, " there is no post in England which I would
exchange for this ; but, if they do not support me, I
must go."

It may well be imagined how important this was as
an instrument of education, independently of the
weight of his own personal qualities. Exactly at the
age when boys begin to acquire some degree of self-
respect, and some desire for the respect of others,
they were treated with confidence by one whose con-
fidence they could not but regard as worth having,
and found themselves in a station where their own
dignity could not be maintained except by consistent
good conduct. And exactly at a time when manly
aspirations begin to expand, they found themselves
invested with functions of government, great beyond
their age, yet naturally growing out of their position ;
whilst the ground of solemn responsibility, on which
they were constantly taught that their authority rested,
had a general, though of course not universal, ten-
dency to counteract any notions of mere personal self-
importance.

" I cannot deny that you have an anxious duty, — a duty
which some might suppose was too heavy for your years. But
it seems to me the nobler as well as the truer way of stating
the case, to say that it is the great privilege of this and other

144 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

such institutions, to anticipate the common time of manhood ;
that by their whole training they fit the character for manly
duties at an age when, under another system, such duties
would be impracticable ; that there is not imposed upon you
too heavy a burden, but that you are capable of bearing, with-
out injury, what to others might be a burden; and therefore to
diminish your duties, and lessen your responsibility, would be no
kindness, but a degradation, — an affront to you and to the
school." (Sermons, vol. v. p. 59.)

3. Whilst he looked to the Sixth Form as the ordi-
nary corrective for the ordinary evils of a public
school, he still felt that these evils from time to time
developed themselves in a shape which demanded
peculiar methods to meet them, and which may best
be explained by one of his letters.

" My own school experience has taught me the monstrous
evil of a state of low principle prevailing amongst those who
set the tone to the rest. I can neither theoretically nor practi-
cally defend our public-school system, where the boys are left
so very much alone to form a distinct society of their own, un-
less you assume that the upper class shall be capable of being
in a manner //eo^ra* between the masters and the mass of the
boys ; that is, shall be capable of receiving, and transmitting to
the rest, through their example and influence, right principles
of conduct, instead of those extremely low ones which are nat-
ural to a society of boys left wholly to form their own standard
of right and wrong. Now, when I get any in this part of the
school who are not to be influenced, — who have neither the
will nor the power to influence others, — not from being inten-
tionally bad, but from very low wit, and extreme childishness
or coarseness of character — the evil is so great, not only neg-
atively but positively (for their low and false views are greed-
ily caught up by those below them), that I know not how to

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 145

proceed, or how to hinder the school from becoming a place
of education for evil rather than for good, except by getting
rid of such persons. And then comes the difficulty, that the
parents who see their sons only at home — that is just where
the points of character which are so injurious fiere are not
called into action — can scarcely be brought to understand
why they should remove them ; and having, as most people
have, only the most vague ideas as to the real nature of a pub-
lic school, they cannot understand what harm they are receiv-
ing, or doing to others, if they do not get into some palpable
scrape, which very likely they never would do. More puzzling
still is it, when you have many boys of this description, so that
the evil influence is really very great, and yet there is not one
of the set whom you would set down as a really bad fellow if
taken alone ; but most of them would really do very well if
they were not together, and in a situation where, unluckily,
their age and size lead them, unavoidably, to form the laws,
and guide the opinion, of their society: whereas, they are
wholly unfit to lead others, and are so slow at receiving good
influences themselves, that they want to be almost exclusively
with older persons, instead of being principally with younger
ones."

The evil undoubtedly was great ; and the difficulty,,
which he describes, in the way of its removal, tended
to aggravate the evil. When first he entered on his
post at Rugby, there was a general feeling in the
country, that, so long as a boy kept himself from of-
fences sufficiently enormous to justify expulsion, he
had a kind of right to remain in a public school ; that
the worse and more troublesome to parents were their
sons, the more did a public school seem the precise
remedy for them; that the great end of a public
school, in short, was to flog the vices out of bad boys.

146 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

Hence much indignation was excited when boys were
sent away for lesser offences : an unfailing supply of
vicious sons was secured, and scrupulous parents were
naturally reluctant to expose their boys to the influ-
ence of such associates.

His own determination had been fixed long before
he came to Rugby ; and it was only after ascertaining
that his power in this respect would be absolute, that
he consented to become a candidate for the post.
The retention of boys who were clearly incapable of
deriving good from the system, or whose influence on
others was decidedly and extensively pernicious,
seemed to him not a necessary part of the trials of
.school, but an inexcusable and intolerable aggravation
of them. " Till a man learns that the first, second,
and third duty of a schoolmaster is to get rid of un-
promising subjects, a great public school," he said,
" will never be what it might be, and what it ought to
be." The remonstrances which he encountered, both
on public and private grounds, were vehement and
numerous. But on these terms alone had he taken
his office ; and he solemnly and repeatedly declared,
that on no other terms could he hold it, or justify the
existence of the public-school system in a Christian
country.

The cases which fell under this rule included all
shades of character, from the hopelessly bad up to the
really good, who yet from their peculiar circumstances
might be receiving great injury from the system of a
public-school, — grave moral offences frequently re-

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 147

peated; boys banded together in sets, to the great
harm of individuals or of the school at large ; over-
grown boys, whose age and size gave them influence
over others, and made them unfit subjects for corpo-
ral punishment, whilst the low place which, either
from idleness or dulness, they held in the school, en-
couraged all the childish and low habits to which they
were naturally tempted. He would retain boys after
offences which, considered in themselves, would seem
to many almost deserving of expulsion : he would re-
quest the removal of others for offences which to many
would seem venial. In short, he was decided by the
ultimate result on the whole character of the individ-
ual, or on the general state of the school.

It was on every account essential to the carrying
out of his principle, that he should mark in every way
the broad distinction between this kind of removal,
and what in the strict sense of the word used to be
called expulsion. The latter was intended by him as
a punishment and lasting disgrace, was inflicted pub-
licly and with extreme solemnity, was of very rare
occurrence, and only for gross and overt offences.
But he took pains to show that removal, such as is
here spoken of, whether temporary or final, was not
disgraceful or penal, but intended chiefly, if not solely,
for a protection of the boy himself or his schoolfellows.
Often it would be wholly unknown who were thus
dismissed, or why ; latterly he generally allowed such
cases to remain till the end of the half-year, that their
removal might pass altogether unnoticed.

148 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

This system was not pursued without difficulty : the
inconvenience attendant upon such removals was occa-
sionally very great ; sometimes the character of the
boy may have been mistaken ; the difficulty of explain-
ing the true nature of the transaction to parents was
considerable ; an exaggerated notion was entertained
of the extent to which this view was carried.

To administer such a system required higher quali-
fications in a head master than mere scholarship or
mere zeal. What enabled him to do so successfully
was the force of his character, his determination to
carry out his principles through a host of particular
obstacles ; his largeness of view, which endeavored to
catch the distinctive features of every case ; the con-
sciousness which he felt, and made others feel, of the
uprightness and purity of his intentions. The predic-
tions that boys who failed at school would turn out
well with private tutors, were often acknowledged to
be verified in cases where the removal had been most
complained of; the diminution of corporal punish-
ment in the school was necessarily much facilitated ;
a salutary effect was produced on the boys by impress-
ing upon them, that even slight offences, which came
under the head master's eye, were swelling the sum of
misconduct which might end in removal ; whilst many
parents were displeased by the system, others were
induced to send " as many boys," he said, " and more,
than he sent away ; " lastly, he succeeded in shaking
the old notion of the conditions under which boys
must be allowed to remain at school, and in impress-

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 149

ing on others the standard of moral progress which
he endeavored himself to enforce.

The following letter to one of the assistant masters
expresses his mode of meeting the attacks to which
he was exposed on the two subjects last mentioned.

" I do not choose to discuss the thickness of Praepostors'
sticks, or the greater or less blackness of a boy's bruises, for
the amusement of all the readers of the newspapers ; nor do
I care in the slightest degree about the attacks, if the masters
themselves treat them with indifference. If they appear to
mind them, or to fear their effect on the school, the apprehen-
sion in this, as in many other instances, will be likely to verify
itself. For my own part, I confess that I will not condescend
to justify the school against attacks, when I believe that it is
going on, not only not ill, but positively well. Were it really
otherwise, I think I should be as sensitive as any one, and very
soon give up the concern. But these attacks are merely what
I bargained for, so far as they relate to my conduct in the
school, because they are directed against points on which my
4 ideas ' were fixed before I came to Rugby, and are only more
fixed now ; e.g., that the authority of the Sixth Form is essen-
tial to the good of the school, and is to be upheld through all
obstacles from within and from without, and that sending away
boys is a necessary and regular part of a good system, not as
a punishment to one, but as a protection to others. Undoubt-
edly it would be a better system if there was no evil ; but, evil
being unavoidable, we are not a jail to keep it in, but a place
of education where we must cast it out, to prevent its taint
from spreading. Meanwhile let us mind our own work, and
try to perfect the execution of our own ' ideas/ and we shall
have enough to do, and enough always to hinder us from being
satisfied with ourselves ; but, when we are attacked, we have
some right to answer with Scipio, who, scorning to reply to a
charge of corruption, said, * Hoc die cum Hannibale bene et

ISO LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

feliciter pugnavi : ' we have done enough good, and undone
enough evil, to allow us to hold our assailants cheap."

II. The spirit in which he entered on the instruc-
tion of the school, constituting, as it did, the main
business of the place, may perhaps best be understood
from a particular exemplification of it in the circum-
stances under which he introduced a prayer before
the first lesson in the Sixth Form, over and above the
general prayers read before the whole school. On
the morning on which he first used it, he said that he
had been much troubled to find that the change from
attendance on the death-bed of one of the boys in his
house to his school-work had been very great : he
thought that there ought not to be such a contrast,
and that it was probably owing to the school-work not
being sufficiently sanctified to God's glory ; that, if it
was made really a religious work, the transition to it
from a death-bed would be slight : he therefore in-
tended for the future to offer a prayer before the first
lesson, that the day's work might be undertaken and
carried on solely to the glory of God and their im-
provement, — that he might be the better enabled to
do his work.

Under this feeling, all the lessons, in his eyes, and
not only those which were more directly religious, were
invested with a moral character; and his desire to
raise the general standard of knowledge and applica-
tion in the school was as great as if it had been his
sole object.

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. l$l

He introduced, with this view, a variety of new reg-
ulations ; contributed liberally himself to the founda-
tion of prizes and scholarships, as incentives to study,
and gave up much of his leisure to the extra labor of
new examinations for the various forms, and of a
yearly examination for the whole school. The spirit
of industry which his method excited in his better
scholars, and more or less in the school at large, was
considerable ; and it was often complained, that their
minds and constitutions were overworked by prema-
ture exertion. Whether this was the case more at
Rugby than in other schools, since the greater exer-
tions generally required in all parts of education, it is
difficult to determine. He himself would never allow
the truth of it, though maintaining that it would be a
very great evil if it were so. The Greek union of the

ap€TYj yvfjLvacTTLKr) with the aptrr] //.ovcri/cr), he thought

invaluable in education, and he held that the freedom
of the sports of public schools was particularly favor-
able to it; and, whenever he saw that boys were
reading too much, he always remonstrated with them,
relaxed their work, and, if they were in the upper part
of the school, would invite them to his house in the
half-year or the holidays to refresh them.

He had a strong belief in the general union of
moral and intellectual excellence. " I have now had
some years' experience," he once said in preaching
at Rugby. " I have known but too many of those
who in their utter folly have said in their heart, there
was no God ; but the sad sight — for assuredly none

152 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

can be more sad — of a powerful, an earnest, and an
inquiring mind seeking truth, yet not finding it — the
horrible sight of good deliberately rejected, and evil
deliberately chosen — the grievous wreck of earthly
wisdom united with spiritual folly — I believe that it
has been, that it is, that it may be — Scripture speaks
of it, the experience of others has witnessed it ; but I
thank God that in my own experience I have never
witnessed it yet : I have still found that folly and
thoughtlessness have gone to evil; that thought and
manliness have been united with faith and goodness."
And in the case of boys, his experience led him, he
said, " more and more to believe in this connection,
for which divers reasons may be given. One, and a
very important one, is, that ability puts a boy in sym-
pathy with his teachers in the matter of his work, and
in their delight in the works of great minds ; whereas
a dull boy has much more sympathy with the unedu-
cated, and others to whom animal enjoyments are all
in all." " I am sure," he used to say, " that, in the
case of boys, the temptations of intellect are not com-
parable to the temptations of dulness ; " and he often
dwelt on " the fruit which I above all things long for,
— moral thoughtfulness, — the inquiring love of truth
going along with the devoted love of goodness."

But for mere cleverness, whether in boys or men,
he had no regard. " Mere intellectual acuteness," he
used to say, in speaking (for example) of lawyers, "di-
vested, as it is, in too many cases, of all that is compre-
hensive and great and good, is to me more revolting

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 153

than the most helpless imbecility, seeming to be al-
most like the spirit of Mephistopheles." Often when
seen in union with moral depravity, he would be in-
clined to deny its existence altogether : the genera-
tion of his scholars to which he looked back with the
greatest pleasure, was not that which contained most
instances of individual talent, but that which had al-
together worked steadily and industriously. The uni-
versity honors which his pupils obtained were very
considerable, and at one time unrivalled by any
school in England ; and he was unfeignedly delighted
whenever they occurred. But he never laid any stress
upon them, and strongly deprecated any system which
would encourage the notion of their being the chief
end to be answered by school education. He would
often dwell on the curious alternations of cleverness
or dulness in school generations, which seemed to
baffle all human calculation or exertion. " What we
ought to do, is to send up boys who will not be
plucked." A mere plodding boy was above all others
encouraged by him. At Laleham he had once got
out of patience, and spoken sharply to a pupil of this
kind, when the pupil looked up in his face, and said,
" Why do you speak angrily, sir ? — indeed, I am do-
ing the best that I can." Years afterwards he used to
tell the story to his children, and said, " I never felt
so much ashamed in my life : that look and that speech
I have never forgotten." And though it would, of
course, happen that clever boys, from a greater sym-
pathy with his understanding, would be brought into

154 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

closer intercourse with him, this did not affect his feel-
ing, not only of respect, but of reverence, to those who,
without ability, were distinguished for high principle
and industry. " If there be one thing on earth which
is truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing
an inferiority of natural powers, where they have been
honestly, truly, and zealously cultivated." In speak-
ing of a pupil of this character, he once said, " I would
stand to that man hat in hand ; " and it was his feel-
ing after the departure of such a one that drew from
him the most personal, perhaps the only personal,
praise, which he ever bestowed on any boy in his
Sermons. (See Sermons, vol. iii. pp. 352, 353.)

This being his general view, it remains to unfold his
ideas of school-instruction in detail.

i. That classical studies should be the basis of in-
tellectual teaching, he maintained from the first.
"The study of language," he said, "seems to me as
if it was given for the very purpose of forming the
human mind in youth ; and the Greek and Latin lan-
guages, in themselves so perfect, and at the same time
freed from the insuperable difficulty which must attend
any attempt to teach boys philology through the
medium of their own spoken language, seem the very
instruments by which this is to be effected." But a
comparison of his earlier and later letters will show
how much this opinion was strengthened in later years,
and how, in some respects, he returned to parts of the
old system, which on his first arrival at Rugby he had
altered or discarded. To the use of Latin verse, which

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 155:

he had been accustomed to regard as " one of the
most contemptible prettinesses of the understanding/*
" I am becoming," he said, " in my old age more and
more a convert." Greek and Latin grammars in Eng-
lish, which he introduced soon after he came, he found
were attended with a disadvantage, because the rules
which in Latin fixed themselves in the boys' memories,,
when learned in English were forgotten. The changes
in his views resulted, on the whole, from his increas-
ing conviction, that " it was not knowledge, but the
means of gaining knowledge, which he had to teach ; "
as well as by his increasing sense of the value of the
ancient authors, as belonging really to a period of
modern civilization like our own ; the feeling that in
them, " with a perfect abstraction from those particu-
lar names and associations which are forever biasing
our judgment in modern and domestic instances, the
great principles of all political questions, whether civil
or ecclesiastical, are perfectly discussed and illustrated
with entire freedom, with most attractive eloquence,
and with profoundest wisdom." (Sermons, vol. iii.^
Preface, p. xiii.)

From time to time, therefore, as in the " Journal of
Education" (vol. vii. p. 240), where his reasons are
stated at length, he raised his voice against the popu-
lar outcry, by which classical instruction was at that
time assailed. And it was, perhaps, not without a
share in producing the subsequent re-action in its favor,
that the one head master who, from his political con-
nections and opinions, would have been supposed most

156 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

likely to yield to the clamor, was the one who made
the most deliberate and decided protest against it.

2. But what was true of his union of new with old
elements in the moral government of the school, ap-
plies no less to its intellectual management. He was
the first Englishman who drew attention in our public
schools to the historical, political, and philosophical
value of philology and of the ancient writers, as dis-
tinguished from the mere verbal criticism and elegant
scholarship of the last century. And besides the gen-
eral impulse which he gave to miscellaneous reading,
both in the regular examinations and by encouraging
the tastes of particular boys for geology or other like
pursuits, he incorporated the study of modern history,
modern languages, and mathematics into the work of
the school, which attempt, as it was the first of its
kind, so it was at one time the chief topic of blame
and praise in his system of instruction. The reading
of a considerable portion of modern history was effected
without difficulty : but the endeavor to teach mathe-
matics and modern languages, especially the latter,
not as an optional appendage, but as a regular part of
the school business, was beset with obstacles which
rendered his plan less successful than he had antici-
pated; though his wishes, especially for boys who
were unable to reap the full advantage of classical
studies, were to a great extent answered.

What has been said, relates rather to his system of
instruction than to the instruction itself. His per-
sonal share in the teaching of the younger boys was

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 157

confined to the general examinations, in which he took
an active part, and to two lessons which he devoted in
every week to the hearing in succession every form in
the school. These visits were too transient for the
boys to become familiar with him, but great interest
was always excited \ and, though the chief impression
was of extreme fear, they were also struck by the way
in which his examinations elicited from them what-
ever they knew, as well as by the instruction which
they received merely from hearing his questions, or
from seeing the effect produced upon him by their
answers. But the chief source of his intellectual as
of his moral influence over the school was through
the Sixth Form. To the rest of the boys he appeared
almost exclusively as a master ; to them he appeared
almost exclusively as an instructor; it was in the
library tower, where he heard their lessons, that his
pupils became first really acquainted with him, and
that his power of teaching, in which he found at once
his main business and pleasure, had its full scope.

It has been attempted hitherto to represent his
principles of education as distinct from himself: but,
in proportion as we approach his individual teaching,
this becomes impracticable ; the system is lost in
the man ; the recollections of the head master of
Rugby are inseparable from the recollections of the
personal guide and friend of his scholars. They will
at once recall those little traits, which, however minute
in themselves, will to them suggest a lively image of
his whole manner. They will remember the glance

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD^ D.D.

with which he looked round in the few moments of
silence before the lesson began, and which seemed to
speak his sense of his own position and of theirs also,
as the heads of a great school ; the attitude in which
he stood, turning over the pages of Facciolati's " Lexi-
con," or Pole's " Synopsis," with his eye fixed upon
the boy who was pausing to give an answer ; the well-
known changes of his voice and manner, so faithfully
representing the feeling within. They will recollect
the pleased look and the cheerful "Thank you," which
followed upon a successful answer or translation ; the
fall of his countenance with its deepening severity, the
stern elevation of the eyebrows, the sudden "Sit
down " which followed upon the reverse ; the courtesy
and almost deference to the boys, as to his equals in
society, so long as there was nothing to disturb the
friendliness of their relation ; the startling earnestness
with which he would check in a moment the slightest
approach to levity or impertinence ; the confidence
with which he addressed them in his half-yearly exhor-
tations ; the expressions of delight with which, when
they had been doing well, he would say that it was a
constant pleasure to him to come into the library.

His whole method was founded on the principle
of awakening the intellect of every individual boy.
Hence it was his practice to teach by questioning.
As a general rule, he never gave information, except
as a kind of reward for an answer, and often withheld
it altogether, or checked himself in the very act of
uttering it, from a sense that those whom he was ad-

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 159

dressing had not sufficient interest or sympathy to
entitle them to receive it. His explanations were as
short as possible — enough to dispose of the difficulty,
and no more ; and his questions were of a kind to call
the attention of the boys to the real point of every
subject, to disclose to them the exact boundaries of
what they knew, or did not know, and to cultivate a
habit, not only of collecting facts, but of expressing
themselves with facility, and of understanding the
principles on which their facts rested. "You come
here," he said, "not to read, but to learn how to read : "
and thus the greater part of his instructions were inter-
woven with the process of their own minds ; there was
a continual reference to their thoughts, an acknowl-
edgment that, so far as their information and power
of reasoning could take them, they ought to have an
opinion of their own. He was evidently working not
for, but with, the form, as if they were equally interested
with himself in making out the meaning of the passage
before them. His object was to set them right, not
by correcting them at once, but either by gradually
helping them on to a true answer, or by making the
answers of the more advanced part of the form serve
as a medium, through which his instructions might be
communicated to the less advanced. Such a system
he thought valuable alike to both classes of boys. To
those who by natural quickness or greater experience
of his teaching were more able to follow his instruc-
tions, it confirmed the sense of the responsible position
which they held in the school, intellectually as well as

160 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D,

morally. To a boy less ready or less accustomed to
it, it gave precisely what he conceived that such a
character required. " He wants this," to use his own
words, " and he wants it daily, not only to interest
and excite him, but to dispel what is very apt to grow
around a lonely reader not constantly questioned, — a
haze of indistinctness as to a consciousness of his own
knowledge or ignorance : he takes a vague impression
for a definite one, an imperfect notion for one that is
full and complete, and in this way he is continually
deceiving himself."

Hence, also, he not only laid great stress on original
compositions, but endeavored so to choose the sub-
jects of exercises as to oblige them to read, and lead
them to think, for themselves. He dealt at once a
death-blow to themes (as he expressed it) on " Vir-
tus est bona res," and gave instead historical or geo-
graphical descriptions, imaginary speeches or letters,
etymological accounts of words, or criticisms of books,
or put religious and moral subjects in such a form as
awakened a new and real interest in them ; as, for
example, not simply " carpe diem," or " procrastina-
tion is the thief of time," but, " carpere diem jubent
Epicurei, jubet hoc idem Christus." So again, in
selecting passages for translation from English into
Greek or Latin, instead of taking them at random
from " The Spectator" or other such works, he made a
point of giving extracts, remarkable in themselves,
from such English and foreign authors as he most ad-
mired, so as indelibly to impress on the minds of his

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. l6l

pupils some of the most striking names and passages
in modern literature. " Ha, very good ! " was his
well-known exclamation of pleasure when he met with
some original thought : " is that entirely your own ? or
do you remember any thing in your reading that sug-
gested it to you?" Style, knowledge, correctness or
incorrectness of statement or expression, he always
disregarded in comparison with indication or promise
of real thought. " I call that the best theme," he
said, " which shows that the boy has read and thought
for himself; that the next best, which shows that he
has read several books, and digested what he has
read; and that the worst, which shows that he has
followed but one book, and followed that without
reflection."

The interest in their work which this method ex-
cited in the boys was considerably enhanced by the
respect, which, even without regard to his general
character, was inspired by the qualities brought out
prominently in the ordinary course of lessons. They
were conscious of (what was indeed implied in his
method itself) the absence of display, which made it
clear that what he said was to instruct them, not to
exhibit his own powers : they could not but be struck
by his never concealing difficulties, and always con-
fessing ignorance ; acknowledging mistakes in his edi-
tion of Thucydides ; and on Latin verses, mathematics,
or foreign languages, appealing for help or information
to boys whom he thought better qualified than himself
to give it. Even as an example, it was not without its

1 62 LfFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

use, to witness daily the power of combination and con-
centration on his favorite subjects which had marked
him, even from a boy, and which especially appeared
in his illustrations of ancient by modern, and modern
by ancient, history. The wide discursiveness with
which he brought the several parts of their, work to
bear on each other ; the readiness with which he re-
ferred them to the sources and authorities of informa-
tion, when himself ignorant of it ; the eagerness with
which he tracked them out when unknown, — taught
them how wide the field of knowledge really was. In
poetry it was almost impossible not to catch something
of the delight and almost fervor with which, as he came
to any striking passage, he would hang over it, reading
it over and over again, and dwelling upon it for the
mere pleasure which every word seemed to give him.
In history or philosophy, events, sayings, and authors
would, from the mere fact that he had quoted them,
become fixed in the memory of his pupils, and give
birth to thoughts and inquiries long afterwards, which,
had they been derived through another medium, would
have been forgotten, or remained unfruitful. The very
scantiness with which he occasionally dealt out his
knowledge, when not satisfied that the boys could
enter into it, whilst it often provoked a half-angry
feeling of disappointment in those who eagerly treas-
ured up all that he uttered, left an impression that
the source from which they drew was unexhausted and
unfathomed, and to all that he did say gave a double
value.

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 163

Intellectually as well as morally, he felt that the
teacher ought himself to be perpetually learning, and
so constantly above the level of his scholars. " I am
sure," he said, speaking of his pupils at Laleham, "that
I do not judge of them or expect of them as I should
if I were not taking pains to improve my own mind."
For this reason, he maintained that no schoolmaster
ought to remain at his post much more than fourteen
or fifteen years, lest by that time he should have fallen
behind the scholarship of the age ; and by his own
reading and literary works he endeavored constantly
to act upon this principle himself. "For nineteen
out of twenty boys," he said once to Archbishop
Whately, in speaking of the importance, not only of
information, but real ability, in assistant masters (and
his remark, of course, applied still more to the station
which he occupied himself), "'ordinary men may be
quite sufficient ; but the twentieth, the boy of real tal-
ents, who is more important than the others, is liable
even to suffer injury from not being early placed under
the training of one whom he can, on close inspection,
look up to as his superior in something besides mere
knowledge. The dangers," he observed, "were of
various kinds. One boy may acquire a contempt for
the information itself, which he sees possessed by a
man whom he feels, nevertheless, to be far below him.
Another will fancy himself as much above nearly all
the world as he feels he is above his own tutor, and
will become self-sufficient and scornful. A third will
believe it to be his duty, as a point of humility, to

1 64 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, £>.£>.

bring himself down intellectually to a level with one
whom he feels bound to reverence ; and thus there
have been instances where the veneration of a young
man of ability for a teacher of small powers has been
like a millstone round the neck of an eagle."

His practical talent as a scholar consisted in his
insight into the general structure of sentences and the
general principles of language, and in his determination
to discard all those unmeaning phrases and forms of
expression by which so many writers of the last gen-
eration, and boys of all generations, endeavor to con-
ceal their ignorance. In Greek and Latin composition
his exceeding indifference to mere excellence of style,
when unattended by any thing better, made it difficult
for him to bestow that praise which was necessary to
its due encouragement as a part of the school work ;
and he never was able to overcome the deficiency,
which he always felt in composing or correcting verse-
exercises, even after his increased conviction of their
use as a mental discipline. But to prose composition
in both languages he had from the first attached con-
siderable importance, not only as the best means of
acquiring a sound knowledge of the ancient authors,
but of attaining a mastery over the English language
also, by the readiness and accuracy of expression which
it imparted. He retained to himself that happy facil-
ity for imitating the style of the Greek historians and
philosophers, for which he was remarkable in youth ;
whilst his Latin prose was peculiar for combining the
force of common Latinity with the vigor and simplicity

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 1 6$

of his own style, — perfectly correct and idiomatic, yet
not the language of Cicero or Livy, but of himself.

In the common lessons, his scholarship was chiefly
displayed in his power of extempore translation into
English. This he had possessed in a remarkable de-
gree from the time that he was a boy at Winchester,
where the practice of reading the whole passage from
Greek or Latin into good English without construing
each particular sentence word by word, had been
much encouraged by Dr. Gabell ; and in his youthful
vacations during his Oxford course, he used to enliven
the sick-bed of his sister Susannah by the readiness
with which in the evenings he would sit by her side,
and translate book after book of the history of Herodo-
tus. So essential did he consider this method to a
sound study of the classics, that he published an elab-
orate defence of it in " The Quarterly Journal of Edu-
cation ; " and when delivering his Modern History
lectures at Oxford, where he much lamented the prev-
alence of the opposite system, he could not resist
the temptation of protesting against it, with no other
excuse for introducing the subject, than the mention
of the Latin style of the middle- age historians. In
itself he looked upon it as the only means of really
entering into the spirit of the ancient authors ; and
requiring, as he did, besides, that the translation should
be made into idiomatic English, and, if possible, into
that style of English which most corresponded to the
period or the subject of the Greek or Latin writer in
question, he considered it further as an excellent ex-

1 66 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

ercise in the principles of taste and in the knowledge
and use of the English language, no less than of those
of Greece and Rome. No one must suppose that
these translations in the least resembled the para-
phrases in his notes to Thucydides, which are avowedly
not translations, but explanations : he was constantly
on the watch for any inadequacy or redundancy of
expression ; the version was to represent, and no
more than represent, the exact words of the original :
and those who, either as his colleagues or his pupils,
were present at his lessons, well know the accuracy
with which every shade of meaning would be repro-
duced in a different shape, and the rapidity with which
he would pounce on any mistake of grammar or con-
struction, however dexterously concealed in the folds
of a free translation.

In the subject of the lessons, it was not only the
language, but the author and the age, which rose be-
fore him : it was not merely a lesson to be got through
and explained, but a work which was to be understood,
to be condemned or to be admired. It was an old
opinion of his, which, though much modified, was never
altogether abandoned, that the mass of boys had not
a sufficient appreciation of poetry to make it worth
while for them to read so much of the ancient poets,
in proportion to prose writers, as was usual when he
came to Rugby. But for some of them he had, be-
sides, a personal distaste. The Greek tragedians,
though reading them constantly, and portions of them
with the liveliest admiration, he thought on the whole

LIFE OF THOAfAS ARNOLD, D.D. l6/

greatly overrated ; and still more, the second-rate
Latin poets, but whom he seldom used ; and some,
such as Tibullus and Propertius, never. " I do really
think," he said, speaking of these last as late as 1842,
" that any examiners incur a serious responsibility who
require or encourage the reading of these books for
scholarships : of all useless reading, surely the reading
of indifferent poets is most useless." And to some
of them he had a yet deeper feeling of aversion. It
was not till 1835 that he himself read the plays of
Aristophanes; and though he was then much struck
with the " Clouds," and ultimately introduced the
partial use of his Comedies in the school, yet his
strong moral disapprobation always interfered with
his sense of the genius, both of that poet and Juvenal.
But of the classical lessons generally his enjoyment
was complete. When asked once whether he did not
find the repetition of the same lessons irksome to him,
"No," he said : "there is a constant freshness in them ;
I find something new in them every time that I go
over them." The best proof of the pleasure which he
took in them is the distinct impression which his
scholars retained of the feeling, often rather implied
than expressed, with which he entered into the several
works ; the enthusiasm with which, both in the public
and private orations of Demosthenes, he would con-
template piece by piece " the luminous clearness " of
the sentences ; the affectionate familiarity which he
used to show towards Thucydides, knowing, as he did,
the substance of every single chapter by itself; the

1 68 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

revival of youthful interest with which he would recur
to portions of the works of Aristotle ; the keen sense
of a new world opening before him, with which in later
years, with ever- increasing pleasure, he entered into
the works of Plato; above all, his childlike enjoy-
ment of Herodotus, and that " fountain of beauty and
delight, which no man," he said, " can ever drain
dry," the poetry of Homer. The simple language of
that early age was exactly what he was most able to
reproduce in his own simple and touching translations ;
and his eyes would fill with tears when he came to
the story which told how Cleobis and Bito, as a re-
ward for their filial piety, lay down in the temple, and
fell asleep and died.

To his pupils, perhaps, of ordinary lessons, the most
attractive were the weekly ones on modern history.
He had always a difficulty in finding any work which
he could use with satisfaction as a text-book. " Gib-
bon, which in many respects would answer the pur-
pose so well, I dare not use." Accordingly, the work,
whatever it might be, was made the groundwork of
his own observations, and of other reading from such
books as the school - library contained. Russell's
" Modern Europe," for example, which he estimated
very low, though perhaps from his own early acquaint-
ance with it at Winchester, with less dislike than
might have been expected, served this purpose for
several years. On a chapter of this he would ingraft,
or cause the boys to ingraft, additional information
from Hallam, Guizot, or any other historian who hap-

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 169

pened to treat of the same period ; whilst he himself,
with that familiar interest which belonged to his favorite
study of history and of geography, which he always
maintained could only be taught in connection with
it, would by his searching and significant questions
gather the thoughts of his scholars round the peculiar
characteristics of the age or the country on which
he wished to fix their attention. Thus, for example,
in the Seven Years' War, he would illustrate the gen-
eral connection of military history with geography, by
the simple instance of the order of Hannibal's succes-
sive victories ; and then, chalking roughly on a board
the chief points in the physical conformation of Ger-
many, apply the same principle to the more compli-
cated campaigns of Frederick the Great. Or, again,
in a more general examination, he would ask for the
chief events which occurred, for instance, in the year
15 of two or three successive centuries, and, by mak-
ing the boys contrast or compare them together, bring
before their minds the differences and resemblances
in the state of Europe in each of the periods in
question.

Before entering on his instructions in theology,
which both for himself and his scholars had most
peculiar interest, it is right to notice the religious
character which more or less pervaded the rest of the
lessons. When his pupils heard him in preaching
recommend them " to note in any common work that
they read, such judgments of men and things, and
such a tone in speaking of them, as are manifestly at

170 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

variance with the spirit of Christ " (Sermons, vol. iii.
p. 1 1 6), or when they heard him ask " whether the
Christian ever feels more keenly awake to the purity
of the spirit of the gospel, than when he reads the
history of crimes related with no true sense of their
evil " (Sermons, vol. ii. p. 223), instances would im-
mediately occur to them from his own practice, to
prove how truly he felt what he said. No direct in-
struction could leave on their minds a livelier image
of his disgust at moral evil than the black cloud of
indignation which passed over his face when speaking
of the crimes of Napoleon or of Caesar, and the dead
pause which followed, as if the acts had just been com-
mitted in his very presence. No expression of his
reverence for a high standard of Christian excellence
could have been more striking than the almost invol-
untary expressions of admiration which broke from
him whenever mention was made of St. Louis of
France. No general teaching of the providential gov-
ernment of the world could have left a deeper impres-
sion than the casual allusions to it, which occurred as
they came to any of the critical moments in the history
of Greece and Rome. No more forcible contrast
could have been drawn between the value of Chris-
tianity and of heathenism than the manner with which,
for example, after reading in the earlier part of the
lesson one of the Scripture descriptions of the Gentile
world, " Now," he said, as he opened the " Satires "
of Horace, " we shall see what it was."

Still, it was in the Scripture lessons that this found

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. IJl

most scope. In the lower forms, it was rather that
more prominence was given to them, and that they
were placed under better regulations, than that they
were increased in amount. In the Sixth Form, besides
the lectures on Sunday, he introduced two lectures -on
the Old or New Testament in the course of the week ;
so that a boy who remained there three years would
often have read through a great part of the New Tes-
tament, much of the Old Testament, and especially of
the Psalms in the Septuagint version, and also com-
mitted much of them to memory : whilst at times he
would deliver lectures on the history of the early
Church, or of the English Reformation. In these les-
sons on the Scriptures, he would insist much on the
importance of familiarity with the very words of the
sacred writers, and of the exact place where passages,
occurred ; on a thorough acquaintance with the differ-
ent parts of the story contained in the several Gospels,
that they might be referred to at once ; on the knowl-
edge of the times when, and the persons to whom, the
Epistles were written. In translating the New Testa-
ment, while he encouraged his pupils to take the lan-
guage of the authorized version as much as possible,
he was very particular in not allowing them to use
words which fail to convey the meaning of the original,
or which by frequent use have lost all definite meaning
of their own, such as "edification," or "the Gos-
pel." Whatever dogmatical instruction he gave, was
conveyed almost entirely in a practical or exegetical
shape ; and it was very rarely indeed that he made-

1/2 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

any allusion to existing parties or controversies within
the Church of England. His own peculiar views,
which need not be noticed in this place, transpired
more or less throughout ; but the great proportion of
his interpretations were such as most of his pupils, of
whatever opinions, eagerly collected and preserved for
their own use in after-life.

But more important than any details was the union
of reverence and reality in his whole manner of treat-
ing the Scriptures, which so distinguished these les-
sons from such as may in themselves almost as little
deserve the name of religious instruction as many les-
sons commonly called secular. The same searching
questions, the same vividness which marked his hos-
torical lessons, — the same anxiety to bring all that he
said home to their own feelings, which made him, in
preparing them for confirmation, endeavor to make
them say, " Christ died for me," instead of the gen-
eral phrase, " Christ died for us," — must often, when
applied to the natural vagueness of boys' notions on
religious subjects, have dispelled it forever. " He
appeared to me," writes a pupil, whose intercourse
with him never extended beyond these lessons, " to be
remarkable for his habit of realizing every thing that
we are told in Scripture. You know how frequently
we can ourselves, and how constantly we hear others,
go prosing on in a sort of religious cant or slang, which
is as easy to learn as any other technical jargon, with-
out seeing, as it were, by that faculty which all possess
of picturing to the mind, and acting as if we really saw

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

things unseen, belonging to another world. Now, he
seemed to have the freshest view of our Lord's life
and death that I ever knew a man to possess. His
rich mind filled up the naked outline of the gospel
history : it was to him the most interesting fact that
has ever happened, — as real, as exciting (if I may
use the expression), as any recent event in modern his-
tory, of which the actual effects are visible." And all
his comments, on whatever view of inspiration they
were given, were always made in a tone and manner
that left an impression, that, from the book which lay
before him, he was really seeking to draw his rule of
life, and that, whilst he examined it in earnest to find
what its meaning was, when he had found it he in-
tended to abide by it.

The effect of these instructions was naturally more
permanent (speaking merely in an intellectual point
of view) than the lessons themselves ; and it was a fre-
quent topic of censure, that his pupils were led to take
up his opinions before their minds were duly prepared
for them. What was true of his method and intention
in the simplest matters of instruction, was true of it as
applied to the highest matters. Undoubtedly, it was
his belief that the minds of young men ought to be
awakened to the greatness of things around them;
and it was his earnest endeavor to give them what he
thought the best means of attaining a firm hold upon
truth. But it was always his wish that his pupils should
form their opinions for themselves, and not take them
on trust from him. To his particular political princi-

1/4 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

pies he carefully avoided allusion ; and it was rarely
that his subjects for school compositions touched on
any topics that could have involved, even remotely,
the disputed points of party politics. In theological
matters, partly from the nature of the case, partly from
the peculiar aspect under which for the last six years
of his life he regarded the Oxford school, he both ex-
pressed his thoughts more openly, and was more anx-
ious to impress them upon his pupils ; but this was
almost entirely in the comparatively few sermons
preached on what could be called controversial topics.
In his intercourse, indeed, with his pupils after they
had left the school, he naturally spoke with greater
freedom on political or theological subjects, yet it was
usually when invited by them ; and, though he often
deeply lamented their adoption of what he held to be
erroneous views, he much disliked a merely unmeaning
echo of his own opinions. " It would be a great mis-
take,11 he said, " if I were to try to make myself here
into a pope."

It was, however, an almost inevitable consequence
of coming into contact with his teaching, and with the
new world which it opened, that his pupils would often,
on their very entrance into life, have acquired a famil-
iarity and encountered a conflict with some of the
most harassing questions of morals and religion. It
would also often happen, that the increasing reverence
which they felt for him would not only incline them
to receive with implicit trust all that he said in the les-
sons or in the pulpit, but also to include in their ad-

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 175

miration of the man all that they could gather of his
general views, either from report or from his published
works ; whilst they would naturally look with distrust
on the opposite notions in religion and politics brought
before them, as would often be the case, in close con-
nection with vehement attacks on him, which in most
cases they could hardly help regarding as unbounded
or unfair. Still, the greater part of his pupils, while
at school, were, after the manner of English boys,
altogether unaffected by his political opinions ; and of
those who most revered him, none in after-life could
be found who followed his views implicitly, even on
the subjects on which they were most disposed to
listen to him. But though no particular school of
opinion grew up amongst them, the end of his teach-
ing would be answered far more truly (and it may
suggest to those who know ancient history, similar
results of similar methods in the hands of other emi-
nent teachers) if his scholars learned to form an inde-
pendent judgment for themselves, and to carry out
their opinions to their legitimate consequences, — to
appreciate moral agreement amidst much intellectual
difference, not only in each other or in him, but in the
world at large ; — and to adopt many, if not all, of his
principles, whilst differing widely in their application
of them to existing persons and circumstances.

III. If there is any one place at Rugby more than
another which was especially the scene of Dr. Arnold's
labors, both as a teacher and as a master, it is the
School-chapel. Even its outward forms, from "the

1/6 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

very cross at the top of the building," on which he
loved to dwell as a visible symbol of the Christian end
of their education, to the vaults which he caused to
be opened underneath for those who died in the
school, must always be associated with his name. " I
envy Winchester its antiquity," he said, "and am there-
fore anxious to do all that can be done to give us
something of a venerable outside, if we have not the
nobleness of old associations to help us." The five
painted windows in the chapel were put up in great part
at his expense, altogether at his instigation. The sub-
ject of the first of these, the great east window, he de-
lighted to regard as " strikingly appropriate to a place
of education," being " the Wise Men's Offering ; " and
the first time after its erection that the chapter de-
scribing the Adoration of the Magi was read in the
church service, he took occasion to preach upon it
one of his most remarkable sermons, that of " Christian
Professions — Offering Christ our Best." (Sermons,
vol. iii. p. 112.) And as this is connected with the
energy and vigor of his life, so the subject of the last,
which he chose himself a short time before his death,
is the confession of St. Thomas, on which he dwelt
with deep solemnity in his last hours, as in his life he
had dwelt upon it as the great consolation of doubting
but faithful hearts, and as the great attestation of what
was to him the central truth of Christianity, our Lord's
divinity. Lastly, the monuments of those who died
in the school during his government, and whose graves
were the first ever made in the chapel ; above all, his

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

own, the monument and grave of the only head master
of Rugby who is buried within its walls, — gave a mel-
ancholy interest to the words with which he closed a
sermon preached on the Founder's day, in 1833, whilst
as yet the recently opened vaults had received no
dead within them : —

" This roof under which we are now assembled, will hold,
it is probable, our children and our children's children ; may
they be enabled to think, as they shall kneel perhaps over the
bones of some of us now here assembled, that they are praying
where their fathers prayed ; and let them not, if they mock in
their day the means of grace here offered to them, encourage
themselves with the thought that the place had long ago been
profaned with equal guilt ; that they are but infected with the
spirit of our ungodliness."

But of him especially it need hardly be said, that
his chief interest in that place lay in the three hundred
boys who, Sunday after Sunday, were collected, morn-
ing and afternoon, within its walls. " The veriest
stranger," he said, "who ever attends divine service
in this chapel, does well to feel something more than
common interest in the sight of the congregation here
assembled. But if the sight so interests a mere stran-
ger, what should it be to ourselves, both to you and to
me? " (Sermons, vol. v. p. 403.) So he spoke within
a month of his death ; and to him certainly, the in-
terest was increased rather than lessened by its famil-
iarity. There was the fixed expression of countenance,
the earnest attention with which, after the service was
over, he sat in his place looking at the boys as they

1/8 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

filed out one by one, in the orderly and silent arrange-
ment which succeeded, in the latter part of his stay,
to the public calling over of their names in the chapel.
There was the complete image of his union of dignity
and simplicity, of manliness and devotion, as he per-
formed the chapel service, especially when at the
communion table he would read, or rather repeat
almost by heart, the Gospel or Epistle of the day, with
the impressiveness of one who entered into it equally
with his whole spirit and also with his whole under-
standing. There was the visible animation with which,
by force of long association, he joined in the musical
parts of the service, to which he was by nature wholly
indifferent, as in the chanting of the Nicene Creed,
which was adopted in accordance with his conviction
that creeds in public worship (Sermons, vol. iii. p. 310)
ought to be used as triumphant hymns of thanksgiv-
ing ; or still more in the Te Deum, which he loved
so dearly, and when his whole countenance would be
lit up at his favorite verse, " When Thou hadst over-
come the sharpness of death, Thou didst open the
kingdom of heaven to all believers."

From his own interest in the service naturally flowed
his anxiety to impart it to his scholars ; urging them
in his later sermons or in his more private addresses,
to join in the responses, at times with such effect, that
at least from all the older part of the school the re-
sponses were very general. The very course of the
ecclesiastical year would often be associated in their
minds with their remembrance of the peculiar feeling

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 1/9

with which they saw that he regarded the greater fes-
tivals, and of the almost invariable connection of his
sermons with the services of the day. The touching
recollections of those amongst the living or the dead,
whom he loved or honored, which passed through his
mind as he spoke of All Saints' Day, and, whenever it
was possible, of its accompanying feast, now no longer
observed, All Souls' Day ; and the solemn thoughts
of the advance of human life, and of the progress of
the human race, and of the Church, which were awak-
ened by the approach of Advent, — might have es-
caped a careless observer; but it must have been
difficult for any one not to have been struck by the
triumphant exultation of his whole manner on the re-
currence of Easter Day. Lent was marked during
his last three years, by the putting up of boxes in the
chapel and the boarding-houses, to receive money for
the poor, a practice adopted not so much with the
view of relieving any actual want, as of affording the
boys an opportunity for self-denial and almsgiving.

He was anxious to secure the administration of the
rite of confirmation, if possible, once every two years ;
when the boys were prepared by himself and the other
masters in their different boarding-houses, who each
brought up his own division of pupils on the day of
the ceremony ; the interest of which was further en-
hanced, during his earlier years, by the presence of
the late Bishop Ryder, for whom he entertained a
great respect, and latterly by the presence of his in-
timate friend, Archbishop Whately. The Confirmation

180 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

Hymn of Dr. Hinds, which was used on these occa-
sions, became so endeared to his recollections, that
when travelling abroad, late at night, he would have
it repeated or sung to him. One of the earliest public
addresses to the school was that made before the first
confirmation, and published in the second volume of
his Sermons ; and he always had something of the
kind (over and above the bishop's charge), either
before or after the regular chapel service.

The Communion was celebrated four times a year.
At first some of the Sixth Form boys alone were in
the habit of attending : but he took pains to invite to
it boys in all parts of the school, who had any serious
thoughts ; so that the number, out of two hundred and
ninety or three hundred boys, was occasionally a hun-
dred, and never less than seventy. To individual
boys he rarely spoke on the subject, from the fear of
its becoming a matter of form or favor; but in his
sermons he dwelt upon it much, and would afterwards
speak with deep emotion of the pleasure and hope
which a larger attendance than usual would give him.
It was impossible to hear these exhortations, or to see
him administer it, without being struck by the strong
and manifold interest which it awakened in him ; and
at Rugby it was, of course, more than usually touch-
ing to him from its peculiar relation to the school.
When he spoke of it in his sermons, it was evident,
that amongst all the feelings which it excited in him-
self, and which he wished to impart to others, none
was so prominent as the sense that it was a com-

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. l8l

munion, not only with God, but with one another, and
that the thoughts thus roused should act as a direct
and especial counterpoise to that false communion and
false companionship, which, as binding one another,
not to good, but to evil, he believed to be the great
source of mischief to the school at large. And when
— especially to the very young boys, who sometimes
partook of the Communion — he bent himself down
with looks of fatherly tenderness, and glistening eyes
and trembling voice, in the administration of the ele-
ments, it was felt, perhaps, more distinctly than at
any other time, how great was the sympathy which he
felt with the earliest advances to good in every indi-
vidual boy.

That part of the chapel service, however, which, at
least to the world at large, is most connected with
him, as being the most frequent and most personal of
his ministrations, was his preaching. Sermons had
occasionally been preached by the head master of
this and other public schools to their scholars before
his coming to Rugby, but (in some cases from the
peculiar constitution or arrangement of the school) it
had never before been considered an essential part of
the head master's office. The first half-year he con-
fined himself to delivering short addresses, of about
five minutes' length, to the boys of his own house.
But from the second half-year he began to preach
frequently; and from the autumn of 1831, when he
took the chaplaincy, which had then become vacant,
he preached almost every Sunday of the school-year

1 82 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

to the end of his life. It may be allowable to dwell
for a few moments on a practice which has since been
followed, whenever it was practicable, in the other
great public schools, and on sermons which, as they
were the first of their kind, will also be probably long
looked upon as models of their kind, in English
preaching. They were preached always in the after-
noon, and lasted seldom more than twenty minutes,
sometimes less, — a new one almost every time. " A
man could hardly," he said, " preach on the same
subject, without writing a better sermon than he had
written a few years before." However much they
may have occupied his previous thoughts, they were
written almost invariably between the morning and
afternoon service ; and though often under such stress
of time that the ink of the last sentence was hardly
dry when the chapel bell ceased to sound, they con-
tain hardly a single erasure : and the manuscript vol-
umes remain as accessible a treasure to their possessors
as if they were printed.

When he first began to preach, he felt that his chief
duty was to lay bare, in the plainest language that he
could use, the sources of the evils of schools, and to
contrast them with the purity of the moral law of
Christianity. "The spirit of Elijah," he said, "must
ever precede the spirit of Christ." But, as he ad-
vanced, there is a marked contrast between the severe
tone of his early sermons in the second volume, when
all was yet new to him, except the knowledge of the evil
which he had to combat, and the gentler tone which

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 183

could not but be inspired by his greater familiarity
both with his work and his pupils — between the direct
attack on particular faults which marks the course of
Lent Sermons in 1830, and the wish to sink the men-
tion of particular faults in the general principle of love
to Christ and abhorrence of sin, which marks the
summary of his whole school experience in the last
sermon which he ever preached. When he became
the constant preacher, he made a point of varying the
more directly practical addresses with sermons on
the interpretation of Scripture, on the general princi-
ples and evidences of Christianity, or on the dangers
of their after-life, applicable chiefly to the elder boys.
Amongst these last should be noticed those which
contained more or less the expression of his senti-
ments on the principles to which he conceived his
pupils liable hereafter to be exposed at Oxford, and
most of which, as being of a more general interest, he
selected for publication in his third and fourth volumes.
That their proportion to those that are published af-
fords no measure of their proportion to those that are
unpublished, may be seen at once by reference to the
year's course in the fifth volume, which, out of thirty-
four, contains only four which could possibly be in-
cluded in this class. That it was not his own intention
to make them either personal or controversial, appears
from an explanation to a friend of a statement which,
in 1839, appeared in the newspapers, that he "had
been preaching a course of sermons against the Oxford
errors." — " The origin of the paragraph was simply

184 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

this : that I preached two in February, showing that
the exercise of our own judgment was not inconsis-
tent with the instruction and authority of the Church,
or with individual modesty and humility [viz., the
thirty-first and thirty-second in vol. iv.]. They were
not in the least controversial, and neither mentioned
nor alluded to the Oxford writers. And I have
preached only these two which could even be sup-
posed to bear upon their doctrines. Indeed, I should
not think it right, except under very different cir-
cumstances from present ones, to occupy the boys*
time or thoughts with such controversies." The gen-
eral principles, accordingly, which form the ground-
work of all these sermons, are such as are capable of
a far wider application than to any particular school
of English opinion, and often admit of direct applica-
tion to the moral condition of the school. But the
quick ears of boys, no doubt, were always ready to give
such sermons a more personal character than he had
intended, or perhaps had even in his mind at the mo-
ment ; and at times, when the fear of these opinions
was more forcibly impressed upon him, the allusion,
and even mention of the writers in question, is so
direct, that no one could mistake it.

But it was, of course, in their direct practical appli-
cation to the boys, that the chief novelty and excel-
lence of his sermons consisted. Yet, though he spoke
with almost conversational plainness on the peculiar
condition of public schools, his language never left an
impression of familiarity, rarely of personal allusion.

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 1 8$

In cases of notorious individual misconduct, he gen-
erally shrunk from any pointed mention of them ; and
on one occasion, when he wished to address the boys
on an instance of untruthfulness which had deeply
grieved him, he had the sermon before the regular
service, in order to be alone in the chapel with the
boys, without the presence even of the other masters.
Earnest and even impassioned as his appeals were,
himself at times almost overcome with emotion, there
was yet nothing in them of excitement. In speaking
of the occasional deaths in the school, he would dwell
on the general solemnity of the event, rather than on
any individual or agitating details ; and the impression
thus produced, instead of belonging to the feeling of
the moment, has become part of an habitual rule for
the whole conduct of life. Often he would speak with
severity and bitter disappointment of the evils of the
place, yet there was hardly ever a sermon which did
not contain some words of encouragement. " I have
never," he said in his last sermon, " wished to speak
with exaggeration : it seems to me as unwise as it is
wrong to do so. I think that it is quite right to ob-
serve what is hopeful in us, as well as what is threaten-
ing; that general confessions of unmixed evil are
deceiving and hardening, rather than arousing; that
our evil never looks so really dark as when we contrast
it with any thing which there may be in us of good."
(Sermons, vol. v. p. 460.)

Accordingly, even from the first, and much more
in after- years, there was blended with his sterner tone

1 86 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

a strain of affectionate entreaty, — an appeal to prin-
ciples, which could be appreciated only by a few ; ex-
hortations to duties, such as self-denial, and visiting
the poor, which some at least might practice, whilst
none could deny their obligation. There also ap-
peared most evidently, — what indeed pervaded his
whole school life, — the more than admiration with
which he regarded those who struggled against the
stream of school opinion, and the abiding comfort
which they afforded him. In them he saw, not merely
good boys and obedient scholars, but the companions
of every thing high and excellent, with which his
strong historical imagination peopled the past, or
which his lively sense of things unseen realized in the
invisible world. There were few present in the chapel
who were not at least for the moment touched, when,
in one of his earliest sermons, he closed one of these
earnest appeals with the lines from Milton which always
deeply moved him, — the blessing on Abdiel.

But more than either matter or manner of his preach-
ing, was the impression of himself. Even the mere
readers of his sermons will derive from them the his-
tory of his whole mind, and of his whole management
of the school. But to his hearers it was more than
this. It was the man himself, there more than in any
other place, concentrating all his various faculties and
feelings on one sole object, combating face to face the
evil with which, directly or indirectly, he was elsewhere
perpetually struggling. He was not the preacher or the
clergyman, who had left behind all his usual thoughts

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. l8/

and occupations as soon as he had ascended the pulpit-
He was still the scholar, the historian, and theologian,
basing all that he said, not indeed ostensibly, but con-
sciously, and often visibly, on the deepest principles
of the past and present. He was still the instructor
and the schoolmaster, only teaching and educating with
increased solemnity and energy. He was still the
simple-hearted and earnest man, laboring to win others
to share in his own personal feelings of disgust at sin,
and love of goodness, and to trust to the same faith in,
which he hoped to live and die himself.

It is difficult to describe, without seeming to exag-
gerate, the attention with which he was heard by all
above the very young boys. Years have passed away,
and many of his pupils can look back to hardly any-
greater interest than that with which, for those twenty
minutes, Sunday after Sunday, they sat beneath that
pulpit, with their eyes fixed upon him, and their atten-
tion strained to the utmost to catch every word that
he uttered. It is true, that, even to the best, there was
much, and to the mass of boys, the greater part, of
what he said, that must have passed away from them
as soon as they had heard it, without any correspond-
ing fruits. But they were struck, as boys naturally
would be, by the originality of his thoughts, and what
always impressed them as the beauty of his* language ;
and in the substance of what he said, much that might
have seemed useless, because for the most part im-
practicable to boys, was not without its effect in break-
ing completely through the corrupt atmosphere of

1 88 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

school opinion, and exhibiting before them once every
week an image of high principle and feeling, which
they felt was not put on for the occasion, but was con-
stantly living amongst them. And to all it must have
been an advantage, that, for once in their lives, they
had listened to sermons which none of them could
associate with the thought of weariness, formality, or
exaggeration. On many there was left an impression
to which, though unheeded at the time, they recurred
in after-life. Even the most careless boys would some-
times, during the course of the week, refer almost in-
voluntarily to the sermon of the past Sunday, as a
condemnation of what they were doing. Some, whilst
they wonder how it was that so little practical effect
was produced upon themselves at the time, yet retain
the recollection (to give the words of one who so
describes himself) , that " I used to listen to them from
first to last with a kind of awe, and over and over
again could not join my friends at the chapel door,
but would walk home to be alone ; and I remember
the same effects being produced by them, more or less,
on others, whom I should have thought hard as stones,
and on whom I should think Arnold looked as some
of the worst boys in the school."

IV. Although the chapel was the only place in
which, to the school at large, he necessarily appeared
in a purely pastoral and personal relation, yet this
relation extended, in his view, to his whole management
of his scholars ; and he conceived it to be his duty
and that of the other masters to throw themselves, as

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 189

much as possible, into the way of understanding and
entering into the feelings of the boys, not only in their
official intercourse, but always. When he was first
appointed at Rugby, his friends had feared that the
indifference which he felt towards characters and per-
sons with whom he had no especial sympathy, would
have interfered with his usefulness as head master.
But in the case of boys, a sense of duty supplied the
want of that interest in character, as such, of which,
in the case of men, he possessed but little. Much ast
there was in the peculiar humor of boys which his own
impatience of moral thoughtlessness, or of treating
serious or important subjects with any thing like ridi-
cule or irony, prevented him from fully appreciating,
yet he truly felt, that the natural youthfulness and elas-
ticity of his constitution gave him a great advantage in
dealing with them. " When I find that I cannot run
up the library stairs," he said, " I shall know that it is
time for me to go."

Thus, traits and actions of boys, which to a stranger
would have told nothing, were to him highly signifi-
cant. His quick and far-sighted eye became familiar
with the face and manner of every boy in the schooL
" Do you see," he said to an assistant master who had
recently come, " those two boys walking together ? I
never saw them together before ; you should make it
an especial point of observing the company they keep :
— nothing so tells the changes in a boy's character."
The insight which he thus acquired into the general
characteristics of boyhood, will not be doubted by anjr

190 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

.reader of his sermons ; and his scholars used some-
times to be startled by the knowledge of their own
notions, which his speeches to them implied. "Often
and often," says one of them, " have I said to myself,
' If it was one of ourselves who had just spoken, he
could not more completely have known and under-
stood our thoughts and ideas.' " And though it
might happen that his opinion of boys would, like his
opinions of men, be too much influenced by his dis-
position to judge of the whole from some one promi-
nent feature, and though his fixed adherence to
.general rules might sometimes prevent him from mak-
ing exceptions where the case required it, yet few
could have been long familiar with him without being
struck by the distinctness, the vividness, and, in spite
of great occasional mistakes, the very general truth and
accuracy, of his delineation of their individual charac-
ters, or the readiness with which, whilst speaking most
severely of a mass of boys, he would make allowances,
and speak hopefully in any particular instance that
came before him. Often before any other eye had
-discerned it, he saw the germs of coming good or
evil, and pronounced confident decisions, doubted at
the time, but subsequently proved to be correct ; so
that those who lived with him, described themselves
as trusting to his opinions of boys as to divinations,
and feeling as if by an unfavorable judgment their fate
was sealed.

His relation to the boarders in his own house (called
by distinction the Schoolhouse, and containing between

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. IQI

sixty and seventy boys) naturally afforded more scope
for communication than with the rest of the school.
Besides the opportunities which he took of showing
kindness and attention to them in his own family, in
cases of distress or sickness, he also made use of the
preparation for confirmation for private conversation
with them, and during the later years of his life was
accustomed to devote an hour or more in the evening
to seeing each of them alone by turns, and talking on
such topics as presented themselves, leading them if
possible to more serious subjects. The general man-
agement of the house, both from his strong dislike to
intruding on the privacy even of the youngest, and from
the usual principles of trust on which he proceeded,
he left as much as possible to the Praepostors. Still,
his presence and manner when he appeared officially,
either on special calls, or on the stated occasions of
calling over their names twice a day, was not without
its effect. One of the scenes that most lives in the
memory of his schoohouse pupils is their night- muster
in the rudely lighted hall — his tall figure at the head
of the files of boys arranged on each side of the long
tables, whilst the prayers were read by one of the
Praepostors, and a portion of Scripture by himself.
This last was a practice which he introduced soon
after his arrival, when, on one of those occasions, he
spoke strongly to the boys on the necessity of each
reading some part of the Bible every day, and then
added, that, as he feared that many would not make
the rule for themselves, he should for the future always

192 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

read a passage every evening at this time. He usu-
ally brought in his Greek Testament, and read about
half a chapter in English, most frequently from the
close of St. John's Gospel ; when from the Old Testa-
ment, especially his favorite Psalms, the nineteenth,
for example, and the one hundred and seventh, and
the others relating to the beauty of the natural world.
He never made any comment, but his manner of
reading impressed the boys considerably ; and it was
observed by some of them, shortly after the practice
was commenced, that they had never understood the
Psalms before. On Sunday nights he read a prayer of
his own, and, before he began to preach regularly in
the chapel, delivered the short addresses which have
been before mentioned, and which he resumed, in ad-
dition to his other work on Sundays, during the last
year and a half of his life.

With the boys in the Sixth Form his private inter-
course was comparatively frequent, whether in the les-
sons, or in questions of school government, or in the
more familiar relation in which they were brought to
him in their calls before and after the holidays, their
dinners with him during the half-year, and the visits
which one or more used by turns to pay to him in
Westmoreland during part of the vacation. But with
the greater part of the school, it was almost entirely
confined to such opportunities as arose out of the regu-
lar course of school discipline or instruction, and the
occasional invitations to his house of such amongst
the younger boys as he could find any reason or
excuse for asking.

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 193

It would thus often happen in so large a number,
that a boy would leave Rugby without any personal
communication with him at all ; and, even in the
higher part of the school, those who most respected
him would sometimes complain, even with bitterness,
that he did not give them greater opportunities of
asking his advice, or himself offer more frequently to
direct their studies, and guide their inquiries. Latterly,
indeed, he communicated with them more frequently,
and expressed himself more freely both in public and
private on the highest subjects. But he was always re-
strained from speaking much or often, both from the
extreme difficulty which he felt in saying any thing
without a real occasion for it, and also from his prin-
ciple of leaving as much as possible to be filled up by
the judgment of the boys themselves, and from his
deep conviction, that, in the most important matters of
all, the movement must come not from without, but
from within. And it certainly was the case, that
whenever he did make exceptions to this rule, and
spoke rather as their friend than their master, the
simplicity of his words, the rareness of their occur-
rence, and the stern background of his ordinary ad-
ministration, gave a double force to all that was said.

Such, for example, would be the effect of his speak-
ing of swearing to a boy, not so much in anger or re-
proof, as assuring him how every year he would learn
to see more and more how foolish and disgusting such
language was ; or, again, the distinction he would point
out to them between mere amusement and such as

194 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D,D.

encroached on the next day's duties, when, as he said,
" it immediately becomes what St. Paul calls revelling."
Such also would be the impression of his severe re-
bukes for individual faults, showing by their very short-
ness and abruptness his loathing and abhorrence of
evil. " Nowhere," he said, in speaking to some boys
on bad behavior during prayers at their boarding-
house, — " nowhere is Satan's work more evidently
manifest than in turning holy things to ridicule."
Such also were the cases in which, more than once,
boys, who were tormented while at school with scep-
tical doubts, took courage at last to unfold them to
him, and were almost startled to find the ready sym-
pathy with which, instead of denouncing them as pro-
fane, he entered into their difficulties, and applied his
whole mind to assuage them. So, again, when dealing
with the worst class of boys, in whom he saw indica-
tions of improvement, he would grant indulgences
which on ordinary occasions he would have denied,
with a view of encouraging them by signs of his confi-
dence in them ; and at times, on discovering cases of
vice, he would, instead of treating them with contempt
or extreme severity, tenderly allow the force of the
temptation, and urge it upon them as a proof brought
home to their own minds, how surely they must look
for help out of themselves.

In his preparation of boys for confirmation, he fol-
lowed the same principle. The printed questions
which he issued for them were intended rather as
guides to their thoughts than as necessary to be for-

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 195

mally answered ; and his own interviews with them
were very brief. But the few words which he then
spoke — the simple repetition, for example, of the
promise made to prayer, with his earnest assurance,
that, if that was not true, nothing was true : if any
thing in the Bible could be relied upon, it was that - —
have become the turning-point of a boy's character,
and graven on his memory as a law for life.

But, independently of particular occasions of inter-
course, there was a deep undercurrent of sympathy
which extended to almost all, and which from time to
time broke through the reserve of his outward man-
ner. In cases where it might have been thought that
tenderness would have been extinguished by indigna-
tion, he was sometimes so deeply affected in pronoun-
cing sentence of punishment on offenders, as to be
hardly able to speak. " I felt," he said once of some
great fault of which he had heard in one of the Sixth
Form, and his eyes filled with tears as he spoke, " as
if it had been one of my own children ; and, till I had
ascertained that it was really true, I mentioned it to no
one, not even to any of the masters." And this feel-
ing began before he could have had any personal
knowledge of them. " If he should turn out ill," he
said of a young boy of promise to one of the assistant
masters, and his voice trembled with emotion as he
spoke, " I think it would break my heart." Nor were
any thoughts so bitter to him as those suggested by
the innocent faces of little boys as they first came from
home, — nor any expressions of his moral indignation

196 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

deeper than when he heard of their being tormented
or tempted into evil by their companions. " It is a
most touching thing to me,", he said once in the hear-
ing of one of his former pupils, on the mention of
some new-comers, " to receive a new fellow from his
father, when I think what an influence there is in this
place for evil, as well as for good. I do not know any
thing which affects me more." His pupil, who had,
on his own first coming, been impressed chiefly by the
severity of his manner, expressed some surprise, add-
ing that he should have expected this to wear away
with the succession of fresh arrivals. " No," he said :
" if ever I could receive a new boy from his father
without emotion, I should think it was high time to be
off."

What he felt thus on ordinary occasions, was height-
ened, of course, when any thing brought strongly before
him any evil in the school. " If this goes on," he
wrote to a former pupil on some such occasion, " it
will end either my life at Rugby, or my life altogether."
" How can I go on," he said, "with my Roman His-
tory? There all is noble and high-minded, and here
I find nothing but the reverse." The following ex-
tract from a letter to his friend, Sir T. Pasley, describes
this feeling.

" Since I began this letter, I have had some of the troubles
of school-keeping, and one of those specimens of the evil of
boy-nature, which makes me always unwilling to undergo the
responsibility of advising any man to send his son to a public
school. There has been a system of persecution carried on by

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 1 97

the bad against the good, and then, when complaint was made
to me, there came fresh persecution on that very account ; and
divers instances of boys joining in it out of pure cowardice, both
physical and moral, when if left to themselves they would have
rather shunned it. And the exceedingly small -number of boys
who can be relied on for active and steady good on these occa-
sions, and the way in which the decent and respectable of ordi-
nary life (Carlyle's ' Shams ') are sure on these occasions to
swim with the stream, and take part with the evil, makes me
strongly feel exemplified what the Scripture says about the
strait gate and the wide one, — a view of human nature, which,
when looking on human life in its full dress of decencies and
civilizations, we are apt, I imagine, to find it hard to realize.
But here, in the nakedness of boy-nature, one is quite able to
understand how there could not be found so many as even ten
righteous in a whole city. And how to meet this evil I really
do not know ; but to find it thus rife after I have been [so
many] years fighting against it, is so sickening, that it is very
hard not to throw up the cards in despair, and upset the table.
But then the stars of nobleness, which I see amidst the dark-
ness, in the case of the few good, are so cheering, that one is
inclined to stick to the ship again, and have another good try
at getting her about."

V. As, on the one hand, his interest and sympathy
with the boys far exceeded any direct manifestation of
it towards them, so, on the other hand, the impression
which he produced upon them was derived, not so
much from any immediate intercourse or conversation
with him, as from the general influence of his whole
character, displayed consistently whenever he appeared
before them. This influence, with its consequent
effects, was gradually on the increase during the whole
of his stay. From the earliest period, indeed, the

1 98 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

boys were conscious of something unlike what they
had been taught to imagine of a schoolmaster ; and by
many, a lasting regard was contracted for him : but it
was not till he had been in his post some years, that
there arose that close bond of union which character-
ized his relation to his elder pupils ; and it was, again,
not till later still that this feeling extended itself, more
or less, through the mass of the school, so that, in the
higher forms at least, it became the fashion (so to
speak) to think and talk of him with pride and affec-
tion.

The liveliness and simplicity of his whole behavior
must always have divested his earnestness of any
appearance of moroseness and affectation. " He calls
us fellows" was the astonished expression of the boys
when, soon after his first coming, they heard him speak
of them by the familiar name in use amongst them-
selves ; and in his later years, they observed with
pleasure the unaffected interest with which, in the long
autumn afternoons, he would often stand in the school-
field and watch the issue of their favorite games of
football. But his ascendency was, generally speaking,
not gained, at least in the first instance, by the effect
of his outward manner. There was a shortness, at
times, something of an awkwardness, in his address,
occasioned partly by his natural shyness, partly by his
dislike of wasting words on trivial occasions, which to
boys must have been often repulsive rather than con-
ciliating; something also of extreme severity in his
voice and countenance, beyond what he was himself

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 199

at all aware of. With the very little boys, indeed, his
manner partook of that playful kindness and tender-
ness which always marked his intercourse with chil-
dren : in examining them in the lower forms, he would
sometimes take them on his knee, and go through
picture-books of the Bible or of English history, cover-
ing the text of the narrative with his hand, and making
them explain to him the subject of the several prints.
But in those above this early age, and yet below the
rank in the school which brought them into closer
contact with him, the sternness of his character was
the first thing that impressed them. In many, no
doubt, this feeling was one of mere dread, which, if
not subsequently removed or modified, only served to
repel those who felt it to a greater distance from him.
But in many also, this was, even in the earlier period
of their stay, mingled with an involuntary and, perhaps,
an unconscious, respect inspired by the sense of the
manliness and straightforwardness of his dealings, and
still more, by the sense of the general force of his
moral character ; by the belief (to use the words of
different pupils) in " his extraordinary knack, for I can
call it nothing else, of showing that his object in punish-
ing or reproving, was not his own good or pleasure, but
that of the boy," — " in a truthfulness — an ciXt/cptVcta
— a sort of moral transparency; " in the fixedness of
his purpose, and " the searchingness of his practical
insight into boys," by a consciousness, almost amount-
ing to solemnity, that, " when his eye was upon you, he
looked into your inmost heart ; " that there was some-

200 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

thing in his very tone and outward aspect, before which
any thing low or false or cruel instinctively quailed and
cowered.

And the defect of occasional over-hastiness and
vehemence of expression, which during the earlier
period of his stay at times involved him in some trou-
ble, did not materially interfere with their general
notion of his character. However mistaken it might
be in the individual case, it was evident to those who
took any thought about it, that that ashy paleness and
that awful frown were almost always the expression,
not of personal resentment, but of deep, ineffable scorn
and indignation at the sight of vice and sin ; and it
was not without its effect to observe, that it was a fault
against which he himself was constantly on the watch,
and which, in fact, was in later years so nearly sub-
dued, that most of those who had only known him
during that time can recall no instance of it during
their stay.

But as boys advanced in the school, out of this feel-
ing of fear "grew up a deep admiration, partaking
largely of the nature of awe ; and this softened into a
sort of loyalty, which remained even in the closer and
more affectionate sympathy of later years." " I am
sure," writes a pupil who had no personal communi-
cations with him whilst at school, and but little after-
wards, and who never was in the Sixth Form, " that I
do not exaggerate my feelings when I say, that I felt
a love and reverence for him as one of quite awful
greatness and goodness, for whom I well remember

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 2OI

that I used to think I would gladly lay down my life ; "
adding, with reference to the thoughtless companions
with whom he had associated, " I used to believe that
I, too, had a work to do for him in the school ; and
I did for his sake labor to raise the tone of the set I
lived in, particularly as regarded himself." It was in
boys immediately below the highest form that this new
feeling would usually rise for the first time, and awaken
a strong wish to know more of him. Then, as they
came into personal contact with him, their general
sense of his ability became fixed, in the proud belief
that they were scholars of a man who would be not
less remarkable to the world than he was to them-
selves ; and their increasing consciousness of his own
sincerity of purpose, and of the interest which he took
in them, often awakened, even in the careless and in-
different, an outward respect for goodness, and an
animation in their work before unknown to them.
And when they left school, they felt that they had
been in an atmosphere unlike that of the world about
them. Some of those who lamented not having made
more use of his teaching whilst with him, felt that " a
better thought than ordinary often reminded them
how he first led to it ; and in matters of literature
almost invariably found, that, when any idea of seem-
ing originality occurred to them, that its germ was first
suggested by some remark of Arnold ; " that " still,
to this day, in reading the Scriptures, or other things,
they could constantly trace back a line of thought
that came originally from him, as from a great parent

202 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

mind." And when they heard of his death, they
became conscious — often for the first time — of the
large place which he had occupied in their thoughts,
if not in their affections.

Such was the case with almost all who were in the
Sixth Form with him during the last ten years of his
life ; but with some who, from peculiar circumstances
of greater sympathy with him, came into more perma-
nent communication with him, there was a yet stronger
bond of union. His interest in his elder pupils, unlike
a mere professional interest, seemed to increase after
they had left the school. No sermons were so full of
feeling and instruction as those which he preached on
the eve of their departure for the universities. It was
now that the intercourse, which at school had been
so broken, and, as it were, stolen by snatches, was at
last enjoyed between them to its full extent. It was
sometimes in the few parting words — the earnest
blessing which he then bestowed upon them — that
they became for the first time conscious of his real
care and love for them. The same anxiety for their
good which he had felt in their passage through
school, he now showed, without the necessity of offi-
cial caution and reserve, in their passage through life.
To any pupil who ever showed any desire to continue
his connection with him, his house was always open,
and his advice and sympathy ready. No half-year,
after the four first years of his stay at Rugby, passed
without a visit from his former scholars : some of
them would come three or four times a year ; some

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 2OJ

would stay in his house for weeks. He would offer to
prepare them for their university examinations by pre-
vious examinations of his own : he never shrunk from
adding any of them to his already numerous corre-
spondents, encouraging them to write to him in all
perplexities. To any who were in narrow circum-
stances,— not in one case, but in several, — he would
at once offer assistance ; sometimes making them large
presents of books on their entrance at the university •
sometimes tendering them large pecuniary aid, and
urging to them that his power of doing so was exactly
one of those advantages of his position which he was
most bound to use. In writing for the world at large,
they were in his thoughts, "in whose welfare/7 he
said, " I naturally have the deepest interest, and in
whom old impressions may be supposed to have still
so much force, that I may claim from them at least
a patient hearing.'1 (Sermons, vol. iv., pref. p. Iv.)
And when annoyed by distractions from within the
school, or opposition from without, he turned, he used
to say, to their visits as " to one of the freshest springs
of his life."

They, on their side, now learned to admire those
parts of his character which, whilst at school, they
had either not known or only imperfectly understood.
Pupils with characters most different from each other's,
and from his own, — often with opinions diverging
more and more widely from his as they advanced in
life, — looked upon him with a love and reverence
which made his gratification one of the brightest re-

2O4 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

wards of their academical studies ; his good or evil
fame a constant source of interest and anxiety to
them; his approbation and censure amongst their
most practical motives of action ; his example one of
their most habitual rules of life. To him they turned
for advice in every emergency of life, not so much for
the sake of the advice itself, as because they felt that
no important step ought to be taken without consult-
ing him. An additional zest was imparted to whatever
work they were engaged in, by a consciousness of the
interest which he felt in the progress of their under-
taking, and the importance which he attached to its
result. They now felt the privilege of being able to
ask him questions on the many points which his school-
teaching had suggested without fully developing ; but
yet more, perhaps, they prized the sense of his sym-
pathy and familiar kindness, which made them feel
that they were not only his pupils, but his companions.
That youthfulness of temperament which has been
before noticed in his relation to boys, was still more
important in his relation to young men. All the new
influences which so strongly divide the students of the
nineteenth century from those of the last, had hardly
less interest for himself than for them ; and, after the
dulness or vexation of business or of controversy, a
visit of a few days to Rugby would remind them (to
apply a favorite image of his own) "how refreshing
it is in the depth of winter, when the ground is cov-
ered with snow, and all is dead and lifeless, to walk
by the seashore and enjoy the eternal freshness and

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 2OJ

liveliness of ocean." His very presence seemed to-
create a new spring of health and vigor within them,
and to give to life an interest and an elevation which
remained with them long after they had left him again,
and dwelt so habitually in their thoughts, as a living
image, that, when death had taken him away, the bond
appeared to be still unbroken, and the sense of separa-
tion almost lost in the still deeper sense of a life and
an union indestructible.

What were the permanent effects of this system and
influence, is a question which cannot yet admit of an
adequate answer, least of all from his pupils. The
mass of boys are, doubtless, like the mass of men, in-
capable of receiving a deep and lasting impression
from any individual character, however remarkable ;
and it must also be borne in mind, that hardly any of
his scholars were called by rank or station to take a
leading place in English society, where the effect of
his teaching and character, whatever it might be in
itself, would have been far more conspicuous to the
world at large.

He himself, though never concealing from himself
the importance of his work, would constantly dwell
on the scantiness of its results. " I came to Rugby,"
he said, " full of plans for school reform ; but I soon
found that the reform of a public school was a much
more difficult thing than I had imagined." And, again,
" I dread to hear this called a religious school. I

2O6 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

know how much there is to be done before it can
really be called so." "With regard to one's work/'
he said, " be it school or parish, I suppose the desir-
able feeling to entertain is, always to expect to succeed,
and never think that you have succeeded." He hardly
ever seems to have indulged in any sense of superior-
ity to the other public schools. Eton, for example,
he would often defend against the attacks to which it
was exposed, and the invidious comparisons which
some persons would draw between that school and
Rugby. What were his feelings towards the improve-
ments taking place there and elsewhere, after his com-
ing to Rugby, have been mentioned already : even
between the old system and his own, he rarely drew
a strong distinction, conscious though he must have
been of the totally new elements which he was intro-
ducing. The earliest letters from Rugby express an
unfeigned pleasure in what he found existing; and
there is no one disparaging mention of his predecessor
in all the correspondence, published or unpublished,
that has been collected for this work.

If, however, the prediction of Dr. Hawkins at his
election has been in any way fulfilled, the result of
his work need not depend on the rank, however emi-
nent, to which he raised Rugby School, or the influ-
ence, however powerful, which he exercised over his
Rugby scholars. And if there be any truth in the fol-
lowing letter from Dr. Moberly, to whose testimony
additional weight is given, as well by his very wide
difference of political and ecclesiastical opinion, as by

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 2O/

his personal experience, first as a scholar at Winches-
ter, and an undergraduate at Oxford, then as the
tutor of the most flourishing college in that university,
and lastly, in his present position as head master of
Winchester, it will be felt, that not so much amongst
his own pupils, nor in the scene of his actual labors,
as in every public school throughout England, is to
be sought the chief and enduring monument of Dr.
Arnold's head-mastership at Rugby.

EXTRACT FROM A LETTER OF DR. MOBERLY, HEAD
MASTER OF WINCHESTER.

Possibly [he writes, after describing his own recollections
as a school-boy] other schools may have been less deep in
these delinquencies than Winchester : I believe that in many
respects they were. But I did not find, on going to the univer-
sity, that I was under disadvantages as compared with those
who came from other places : on the contrary, the tone of
young men at the university, whether they came from Win-
chester, Eton, Rugby, Harrow, or wherever else, was univer-
sally irreligious. A religious undergraduate was very rare,
very much laughed at when he appeared ; and, I think I may
confidently say, hardly to be found among public-school men ;
or, if this be too strongly said, hardly to be found, except in
cases where private and domestic training, or good disposi-
tions, had prevailed over the school habits and tendencies. A
most singular and striking change has come upon our public
schools, — a change too great for any person to appreciate ade-
quately, who has not known them in both these times. This
change is undoubtedly part of a general improvement of our
generation in respect of piety and reverence; but I am sure
that to Dr. Arnold's personal, earnest simplicity of purpose,
strength of character, power of influence and piety, which none

208 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

who ever came near him could mistake or question, the carry-
ing of this improvement into our schools is mainly attributable.
He was the first. It soon began to be matter of observation
to us in the university, that his pupils brought quite a different
character with them to Oxford than that which we knew else-
where. I do not speak of opinions: but his pupils were
thoughtful, manly-minded, conscious of duty and obligation,
when they first came to college; we regretted, indeed, that
they were often deeply imbued with principles which we dis-
approved; but we cordially acknowledged the immense im-
provement in their characters in respect of morality and
personal piety, and looked on Dr. Arnold as exercising an
influence for good which (for how many years I know not)
had been absolutely unknown to oui public schools.

I knew, personally, but little of him. You remember the
first occasion on which I ever had the pleasure of seeing him ;
but I have always felt and acknowledged that I owe more to
a few casual remarks of his in respect of the government of a
public school, than to any advice or example of any other per-
son. If there be improvement in the important points of which
I have been speaking at Winchester (and from the bottom of
my heart I testify with great thankfulness that the improve-
ment is real and great), I do declare, in justice, that his exam-
ple encouraged me to hope that it might be effected, and his
hints suggested to me the way of effecting it.

I fear that the reply which I have been able to make to
your question will hardly be so satisfactory as you expected,
as it proceeds so entirely upon my own observations and infer-
ences. At the same time I have had, perhaps, unusual oppor-
tunity for forming an opinion, having been six years at a public
school at the time of their being at the lowest, — having then
mingled with young men from other schools at the university,
having had many pupils from the different schools, and among
them several of Dr. Arnold's most distinguished ones ; and at
last, having had near eight years' experience, as the master of a
school which has undergone in great measure the very altera-

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 2CK)

tion which I have been speaking of. Moreover, I have often
said the very things which I have here written, in the hearing
of men of all sorts, and have never found anybody disposed
to contradict them.

Believe me, my dear Stanley,

Yours most faithfully,

GEORGE MOBERLY.

LETTERS FROM RUGBY.
TO J. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ.

RUGBY, Aug. 29, 1828.

. . . Here we are actually at Rugby, and the school wilt
open to-morrow. I cannot tell you with what deep regret we
left Laleham, where we had been so peaceful and so happy,
and left my mother, aunt, and sisters for the first time in my
life, except during my school and college absences. It was
quite " feror exul in altum," etc. ; but, then, we both looked
upon Rugby as on our Italy, and entered it, I think, with hope
and with thankfulness. . . . But the things which I have had
to settle, and the people whom I have had to see on business,
have been almost endless. To me, unused as I was to busi-
ness, it seemed quite a chaos. But, thank God, being in high
health and spirits, and gaining daily more knowledge of the
state of affairs, I get on tolerably well. Next week, however,
will be the grand experiment ; and I look to it naturally with
great anxiety. I trust I feel how great and solemn a duty I
have to fulfil, and that I shall be enabled to fulfil it by that
help which can alone give the "Spirit of power and love, and
of a sound mind ; " the three great requisites, I imagine, in a
schoolmaster.

You need not fear my reforming furiously ; there, I think, I
can assure you : but, of my success in introducing a religious
principle into education, I must be doubtful ; it is my most
earnest wish, and I pray God that it may be my constant labor

210 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

and prayer ; but to do this would be to succeed beyond all my
hopes ; it would be a happiness so great, that I think the world
would yield me nothing comparable to it. To do it, however
imperfectly, would far more than repay twenty years of labor
and anxiety.

Saturday ', August ^oth. I have been receiving, this morning,
a constant succession of visitors ; and now, before I go out to
return — August jist. I was again interrupted, and now I
think that I had better at once finish my letter. I have entered
twenty-nine new boys, and have got four more to enter ; and I
have to-day commenced my business by calling over names, and
going into chapel, where I was glad to see that the boys be-
haved very well. I cannot tell you how odd it seems to me,
recalling, at once, my school-days more vividly than I could
have thought possible.

TO A PUPIL

(Who had written, with much anxiety, to know whether he had
offended him, as he had thought his manner changed towards him).

GRASMERE, July 15, 1833.

. . . The other part of your letter at once gratified and
pained me. I was not aware of any thing in my manner to
you that could imply disapprobation, and certainly it was not
intended to do so. Yet it is true that I had observed, with
some pain, what seemed to me indications of a want of enthu-
siasm, in the good sense of the word, of a moral sense and
feeling corresponding to what I knew was your intellectual
activity. I did not observe any thing amounting to a sneering
spirit : but there seemed to me a coldness on religious matters,
which made me fear lest it should change to sneering, as your
understanding became more vigorous ; for this is the natural
fault of the undue predominance of the mere intellect, unac-
companied by a corresponding growth and liveliness of the
moral affections, particularly that of admiration and love of
moral excellence, just as superstition arises, where it is honest,
from the undue predominance of the affections, without the

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 211

strengthening power of the intellect advancing in proportioa
This was the whole amount of my feeling with respect to you,
and which has nothing to do with your conduct in school
matters. I should have taken an opportunity of speaking to
you about the state of your mind, had you not led me now to
mention it. Possibly my impression may be wrong, and indeed
it has been created by very trifling circumstances ; but I am
always keenly alive on this point, to the slightest indications,
because it is the besetting danger of an active mind, — a much
more serious one, I think, than the temptation to mere personal
vanity.

I must again say, most expressly, that I observed nothing
more than an apparent want of lively moral susceptibility.
Your answers on religious subjects were always serious and
sensible, and seemed to me quite sincere : I only feared that
they proceeded, perhaps too exclusively, from an intellectual
perception of truth, without a sufficient love and admiration
for goodness. I hold the lines, "nil admirari," etc., to be as
utterly false as any moral sentiment ever uttered. Intense
admiration is necessary to our highest perfection ; and we have
an object in the gospel, for which it may be felt to the utmost,
without any fear lest the most critical intellect should tax us
justly with unworthy idolatry. But I am as little inclined as
any one to make an idol out of any human virtue, or human
wisdom.

TO JACOB ABBOTT
(Author of " The Young Christian," etc.).

RUGBY, Nov. i, 1833.

Although I have not the honor of being personally known
to you, yet my great admiration of your little book, " The
Young Christian,'* and the circumstance of my being engaged,
like yourself, in the work of education, induce me to hope that
you will forgive the liberty I am taking in now addressing you.
A third consideration weighs with me, and in this I feel sure
that you will sympathize, — that it is desirable on every occa«

212 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

sion to enlarge the friendly communication of our country with
yours. The publication of a work like yours in America was
far more delightful to me than its publication in England could
have been. Nothing can be more important to the future wel-
fare of mankind, than that God's people, serving him in power
and in love, and in a sound mind, should deeply influence the
national character of the United States, which in many parts of
the Union is undoubtedly exposed to influences of a very dif-
ferent description, owing to circumstances apparently beyond
the control of human power and wisdom.

I request your acceptance of a volume of Sermons, most of
which, as you will see, were addressed to boys or very young
men, and which therefore coincide in intention with your own
admirable book. And at the same time I venture to send you
a little work of mine on a different subject, for no other reason,
I believe, than the pleasure of submitting my views upon a
great question to the judgment of a mind furnished morally
and intellectually as yours must be.

I have been for five years head of this school. [After de-
scribing the manner of its foundation and growth.] You may
imagine, then, that I am engaged in a great and anxious labor,
and must have considerable experience of the difficulty of turn-
ing the young mind to know and love God in Christ.

TO CHEVALIER BUNSEN.

I have been much delighted with two American works
which have had a large circulation in England, — *' The Young
Christian," and "The Corner Stone," by a New-Englander,
Jacob Abbott. They are very original and powerful ; and the
American illustrations, whether borrowed from the scenery or
the manners of the people, are very striking. And I hear both
from India and the Mediterranean, the most delightful accounts
of the zeal and resources of the American missionaries, that
none are doing so much in the cause of Christ as they are.
They will take our place in the world, I think not unworthily*

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 21$

though with far less advantages in many respects, than those
which we have so fatally wasted. It is a contrast most deeply
humiliating to compare what we might have been with what
we are, with almost Israel's privileges, and with all Israel's
abuse of them. I could write on without limit, if my time were
as unlimited as my inclinations : it is vain to say what I would
give to talk with you on a great many points, though your let-
ters have done more than I should have thought possible
towards enabling me in a manner to talk with you. I feel no
doubt of our agreement : indeed, it would make me very un-
happy to doubt it, for I am sure our principles are the same,
and they ought to lead to the same conclusions. And so I
think they do. God bless you, my dear friend : I do trust to
see you again ere very long.

TO A PERSON WHO HAD ONCE BEEN HIS
LANDLORD

(And was ill of a painful disorder, but refused to see the clergyman of
the parish, or allow his friends to address him on religious subjects).

I was very sorry to see you in such a state of suffering, and
to hear from your friends that you were so generally. I do
not know that I have any title to write to you : but you once
let me speak to you, when I was your tenant, about a subject,
on which I took it very kind that you heard me patiently; and,
trusting to that, I am venturing to write to you again.

I have myself been blessed with very constant health : yet I
have been led to think from time to time, what would be my
greatest support and comfort if it should please God to visit
me either with a very painful or a very dangerous illness ; and
I have always thought, that in both, nothing would do me so
much good as to read, over and over again, the account of the
sufferings and death of Christ, as given in the different Gos-
pels. For, if it be a painful complaint, we shall find that in
mere pain he suffered most severely and in a great variety of
ways ; and, if it be a dangerous complaint, then we shall see

214 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

that Christ suffered very greatly from the fear of death, and
was very sorely troubled in his mind up to the very time
almost of his actual dying. And one great reason why he bore
all this, was that we might be supported and comforted when
we have to bear the same.

But when I have thought how this would comfort me, it is
very true that one cannot help thinking of the great difference
between Christ and one's self, — that he was so good, and that we
are so full of faults and bad passions of one kind or another.
So that if he feared death, we must have greater reason to fear
it ; and so indeed we have were it not for him. But he bore
all his sufferings, that God might receive us after our death, as
surely as he received Christ himself. And surely it is a com-
fort above all comfort, that we are not only suffering no more
than Christ suffered, but that we shall be happy after our suf-
ferings are over, as truly as he is happy.

Dear Mr. , there is nothing in the world which hinders

you or me from having this comfort, but the badness and
hardness of our hearts, which will not let us open ourselves
heartily to God's love towards us. He desires to love us and
to keep us ; but we shut up ourselves from him, and keep our-
selves in fear and misery, because we will not receive his good-
ness. Oh, how heartily we should pray for one another, and
for ourselves, that God would teach us to love him, and be
thankful to him, as he loves us ! We cannot, indeed, love God, if
we keep any evil or angry passion within us. If we do not for-
give all who may have wronged or affronted us, God has de-
clared most solemnly that he will not forgive us. There is no
concealing this, or getting away from it. If we cannot forgive,
we cannot be forgiven. But when I think of God's willingness
to forgive me every day, — though every day I offend him many
times over, — it makes me more disposed than any thing else
in the world, to forgive those who have offended me ; and this,
I think, is natural, unless our hearts are more hard, than with
all our faults they commonly are. If you think me taking a
liberty in writing this, I can only beg you to remember, that as

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 21$

I hope Christ will save me, so he bids me try to bring my
neighbors to him also; and especially those whom I have
known, and from whom I have received kindness. May Christ
save us both, and turn our hearts to love him and our neigh-
bors, even as he has loved us, and has died for us !

TO AN OLD PUPIL.

RUGBY, April 5, 1837.

I take this opportunity to answer your kind and interesting
letter, for which I beg you to accept my best thanks. I can
hardly answer it as I could wish, but I do not like to delay
writing to you any longer. Your account of yourself and of
that unhealthy state of body and mind under which you have
been laboring, was very touching to me. I rejoice that you
were recovering from it, but still you must not be surprised if
God should be pleased to continue your trials for some time
longer. It is to me a matter of the deepest thankfulness, that
the fears, which I at one time had expressed to you about your-
self, have been so entirely groundless : we have the comfort of
thinking, that with the heart once turned to God, and going on
in his faith and fear, nothing can go very wrong with us, al-
though we may have much to suffer, and many trials to undergo.
I rejoice, too, that your mind seems to be in a healthier state
about the prosecution of your studies. I am quite sure that
it is a most solemn duty to cultivate our understandings to the
uttermost, for I have seen the evil moral consequences of fa-
naticism to a greater degree than I ever expected to see them
realized ; and I am satisfied that a neglected intellect is far
oftener the cause of mischief to a man, than a perverted or
over-valued one. Men retain their natural quickness and clev-
erness, while their reason and judgment are allowed to go to
ruin ; and thus they do work their minds, and gain influence,
and are pleased at gaining it ; but it is the undisciplined mind
which they are exercising, instead of one wisely disciplined.
I trust that you will gain a good foundation of wisdom in Ox-
ford, which may minister in after-years to God's glory and the

2l6 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, £>.£>.

good of souls ; and I call by the name of wisdom, — knowl-
edge, rich and varied, digested and combined, and pervaded
through and through by the light of the Spirit of God. Re-
member the words, " Every scribe instructed to the kingdom
of God is like unto a householder, who bringeth out of his
treasure things new and old ; " that is, who does not think that
either the four first centuries on the one hand, nor the nine-
teenth century on the other, have a monopoly of truth, but who
combines a knowledge of one with that of the other, and judges
all according to the judgment which he has gained from the
teaching of the Scriptures. I am obliged to write more
shortly than I could wish : let me hear from you when you can,
and see you when you can ; and be sure, that, whether my judg-
ments be right or wrong, you have no friend who more ear-
nestly would wish to assist you in that only narrow road to life
eternal, which I feel sure that you by God's grace are now
treading.

TO AN OLD PUPIL, ENGAGED IN BUSINESS.

RUGBY, Nov. 18, 1840.

I think that even your very kind and handsome gift to the
library has given me less pleasure than the letter which ac-
companied it, and which was one of the highest gratifications
that a man in my profession can ever experience. Most sin-
cerely do I thank you for it, and be assured that I do value it
very deeply. Your letter holds out to me another prospect
which interests me very deeply. I have long felt a very deep
concern about the state of our manufacturing population, and
have seen how enormous was the work to be done there, and
how much good men, especially those who were not clergymen,
were wanted to do it. And, therefore, I think of you as en-
gaged in business, with no little satisfaction, being convinced
that a good man, highly educated, cannot possibly be in a more
important position in this kingdom than as one of the heads
of a great manufacturing establishment. I feel encouraged
also, by the kindness of your letter, to trouble you, perhaps,

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 2 1/

hereafter with some questions on a point where my practical
knowledge is, of course, nothing. Yet I see the evils and dan-
gers of the present state of things, and long that those who
have the practical knowledge could be brought steadily and
systematically to consider the possibility of a remedy. . . . We
are now in the midst of the winter examination, which, as you
may remember, gives us all sufficient employment.

TO ARCHBISHOP WHATELY.

I must conclude with a more delightful subject, — my most
dear and blessed sister. I never saw a more perfect instance
of the spirit of power and of love, and of a sound mind ; in-
tense love, almost to the annihilation of selfishness — a daily
martyrdom for twenty years, during which she adhered to her
early-formed resolution of never talking about herself ; thought-
ful about the very pins and ribbons of my wife's dress, about
the making of a doll's cap for a child — but of herself, save
only as regarded her ripening in all goodness, wholly thought-
less, enjoying every thing lovely, graceful, beautiful, high-
minded, whether in God's works or man's, with the keenest
relish ; inheriting the earth to the very fulness of the promise,
though never leaving her crib, nor changing her posture ; and
preserved through the very valley of the shadow of death,
from all fear or impatience, or from every cloud of impaired
reason, which might mar the beauty of Christ's Spirit's glori-
ous work. May God grant that I might come but within one
hundred degrees of her place in glory. God bless you all.

TO MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE.

Fox How, Jan. 2, 1841.

... If our minds were comprehensive enough, and life were
long enough, to follow with pleasure every pursuit not sinful,
I can fancy that it would be better to like shooting than not to
like it ; but as things are, all our life must be a selection, and
pursuits must be neglected, because we have not time or mind

2l8 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

to spare for them. So that I cannot but think, that shooting
and fishing, in our state of society, must always be indulged at
the expense of something better.

I feel quite as strongly as you do the extreme difficulty of
giving to girls what really deserves the name of education in-
tellectually. When was young, I used to teach her some

Latin with her brothers, and that has been, I think, of real use
to her ; and she feels it now in reading and translating German,
of which she does a great deal. But there is nothing for girls
like the Degree examination, which concentrates one's reading
so beautifully, and makes one master a certain number of books
perfectly. And unless we had a domestic examination for
young ladies to be passed before they came out, and another
like the great go, before they come of age, I do not see how
the thing can ever be effected. Seriously, I do not see how we
can supply sufficient encouragement for systematic and labori-
ous reading, or how we can insure many things being retained
at once fully in the mind, when we are wholly without the ma-
chinery which we have for our boys. I do nothing now with
my girls regularly, owing to want of time : once, for a little

while, I used to examine in Guizot's " Civilization of

France ; " and I am inclined to think that few better books could
be found for the purpose than this and his " Civilization of
Europe." They embrace a great multitude of subjects, and a
great variety, and some philosophical questions among the rest,
which would introduce a girl's mind a little to that world of
thought to which we were introduced by our Aristotle.

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

CHAPTER IV.

GENERAL LIFE AT RUGBY.

THE general view of Dr. Arnold's life at Rugby must
not be closed without touching, however briefly and
imperfectly, on that aspect of it which naturally gave
the truest view of his mind and character, whilst to
those at a distance it was comparatively but little known.

Perhaps the scene which, to those who knew him
best, would bring together the recollections of his
public and private life in the most lively way, was his
study at Rugby. There he sat at his work, with no
attempt at seclusion, — conversation going on around
him ; his children playing in the room ; his frequent
guests, whether friends or former pupils, coming in or
out at will, — ready at once to break off his occupations
to answer a question, or to attend to the many inter-
ruptions to which he was liable ; and from these
interruptions, or from his regular avocations, at the few-
odd hours or minutes which he could command, would
he there return and recommence his writing, as if it
had not been broken off. "Instead of feeling my
head exhausted," he would sometimes say after the

-1220 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

day's business was over, " it seems to have quite an
eagerness to set to work." " I feel as if I could dic-
tate to twenty secretaries at once."

Yet, almost unfailing as was this "unhasting, unrest-
ing diligence," to use the expression of a keen observ-
er, who thus characterized his impression of one day's
visit at Rugby, he would often wish for something
more like leisure and repose. " We sometimes feel,"
he said, " as if we should like to run our heads into a
hole — to be quiet for a little time from the stir of so
many human beings which greets us from morning to
evening." And it was from amidst this chaos of
employments that he turned, with all the delight of
which his nature was capable, to what he often dwelt
upon as the rare, the unbroken, the almost awful
happiness of his domestic life. It is impossible ade-
quately to describe the union of the whole family
round him, who was not only the father and guide,
but the elder brother and playfellow, of his children ;
the first feelings of enthusiastic love and watchful care,
carried through twenty-two years of wedded life, —
the gentleness and devotion which marked his whole
feeling and manner in the privacy of his domestic
intercourse. Those who had known him only in the
school, can remember the kind of surprise with which
they first witnessed his tenderness and playfulness.
Those who had known him only in the bosom of his
family, found it difficult to conceive how his pupils or
the world at large should have formed to themselves
:so stern an image of one in himself so loving. Yet

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 221

both were alike natural to him ; the severity and the
playfulness expressing each in their turn the earnestness
with which he entered into the business of life, and
the enjoyment with which he entered into its rest;
whilst the common principle, which linked both to-
gether, made every closer approach to him in his,
private life a means for better understanding him in
his public relations.

Enough, however, may perhaps be said to recall
something at least of its outward aspect. There were
his hours of thorough relaxation, when he would throw
off all thoughts of the school and of public matters ; his
quiet walks by the side of his wife's pony, when he
would enter into the full enjoyment of air and exercise,
and the outward face of nature, observing with dis-
tinct pleasure each symptom of the burst of spring or
of the richness of summer — " feeling like a horse
pawing the ground, impatient to be off," — " as if the
very act of existence was an hourly pleasure to him."
There was the cheerful voice that used to go sounding
through the house in the early morning, as he went
round to call his children ; the new spirits which he
seemed to gather from the mere glimpses of them in
the midst of his occupations ; the increased merriment
of all in any game in which he joined ; the happy
walks on which he would take them in the fields and
hedges, hunting for flowers ; the yearly excursions to
look in a neighboring clay-pit for the earliest colt's-foot,
with the mock siege that followed. Nor, again, was
the sense of his authority as a father ever lost in his

222 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

playfulness as a companion. His personal superin-
tendence of their ordinary instructions was necessarily
limited by his other engagements, but it was never
wholly laid aside : in the later years of his life it was
his custom to read the Psalms and Lessons of the
clay with his family every morning ; and the common
reading of a chapter in the Bible every Sunday even-
ing, with repetition of hymns or parts of Scripture, by
every member of the family; the devotion with which
he would himself repeat his favorite poems from " The
Christian Year," or his favorite passages from the
Gospels ; the same attitude of deep attention in
listening to the questions of his youngest children;
the same reverence in answering their difficulties,
that he would have shown to the most advanced of his
friends or his scholars, — form a picture not soon to
pass away from the mind of any one who was ever
present. But his teaching in his family was naturally
not confined to any particular occasions : they looked
to him for information and advice at all times, and a
word of authority from him was a law not to be ques-
tioned for a moment. And with the tenderness which
seemed to be alive to all their wants and wishes, there
was united that peculiar sense of solemnity with which
in his eyes the very idea of a family life was invested.
"I do not wonder," he said, " that it was thought a
great misfortune to die childless in old times, when
they had not fuller light — it seems so completely
wiping a man out of existence." The anniversaries
of domestic events, the passing away of successive

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 22$

generations, the entrance of his sons on the several
stages of their education, — struck on the deepest
chords of his nature, and made him blend with every
prospect of the future, the keen sense of the contin-
uance (so to speak) of his own existence in the good
and evil fortunes of his children, and to unite the
thought of them with the yet more solemn feeling
with which he was at all times wont to regard " the
blessing " of "a whole house transplanted entire from
earth to heaven, without one failure."

In his own domestic happiness he never lost sight
of his early friends. " He was attached to his family,"
it was truly said of him by Archbishop Whately, as if he
had no friends ; to his friends, as if he had no family ;
and," he adds, " to his country, as if he had no friends
or relations." Debarred as he was from frequent inter-
course with most of them by his and their occupations,
he made it part of the regular business of his life to
keep up a correspondence with them. " I never do,"
he said, " and I trust I never shall, excuse myself for
not writing to old and dear friends, for it is really a
duty which it is mere indolence and thoughtlessness
to neglect." The very aspect of their several homes
lived as distinct images in his mind, and seemed to
have an equal claim on his interest. To men of such
variety of opinion and character, that the very names
of some of them are identified with measures and
views the most opposite that good men can entertain,
he retained to the end a strong and almost equal affec-
tion. The absence of greater mutual sympathy was

224 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

to him almost the only shadow thrown over his happy
life; no difference of opinion ever destroyed his
desire for intercourse with them ; and where, in spite
of his own efforts to continue it, it was so interrupted,
the subject was so painful to him, that, even with those
most intimate with him, he could hardly bear to allude
to it.

How lively was his interest in the state of England
generally, and especially of the lower orders, will ap-
pear elsewhere. But the picture of his ordinary life
would be incomplete without mention of his inter-
course with the poor. He purposely abstained, as
will be seen, from mixing much in the affairs of the
town and neighborhood of Rugby. But he was always
ready to assist in matters of local charity or usefulness,
— giving lectures, for example, before the Mechanics'
Institutes at Rugby and Lutterworth, writing tracts on
the appearance of the cholera in the vicinity, and,
after the establishment of the railway station at half a
mile from the town, procuring the sanction of the
bishop for the performance of a short service there
on Sunday by himself and the assistant masters in
turn. And with the poor generally, though his ac-
quaintance was naturally much more limited than it
had been in the village of Laleham, yet with some
few, chiefly aged persons in the almshouse of the place,
he made a point of keeping up a frequent and familiar
intercourse.

In this intercourse, sometimes in conversations with
them as he met or overtook them alone on the road,

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 22$

usually in such visits as he could pay to them in his
spare moments of relaxation, he assumed less of the
character of a teacher than most clergymen would
have thought right, reading to them occasionally, but
generally talking to them with the manner of a friend
and an equal. This resulted partly from the natural
reserve and shyness which made him shrink from
entering on sacred subjects with comparative strangers,
and which, though he latterly somewhat overcame it,
almost disqualified him, in his own judgment, from
taking charge of a parish. But it was also the effect
of his reluctance to address them in a more authori-
tative or professional tone than he would have used
towards persons of his own rank. Feeling keenly
what seemed to him at once the wrong and the mis-
chief done by the too wide separation between the
higher and lower orders, he wished to visit them " as
neighbors, without always seeming bent on relieving or
instructing them," and could not bear to use language
which to any one in a higher station would have beea
thought an interference. With the servants of his
household, for the same reasons, he was in the habit,
whether in travelling or in his own house, of consulting
their accommodation, and speaking to them familiarly,
as to so many members of the domestic circle. And
in all this, writes one who knew well his manner to the
poor, " there was no affectation of condescension : it
was a manly address to his fellow-men, as man address-
ing man." " I never knew such a humble man as the
Doctor," said the parish clerk at Laleham, after he had

226 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

revisited it from Rugby : " he comes and shakes us by
the hand as if he was one of us." " He used to come
into my house," said an old woman near his place in
Westmoreland, "and talk to me as if I was a lady."
Often, no doubt, this was not appreciated by the poor,
and might, at times, be embarrassing to himself; and
it is said that he was liable to be imposed upon by
them, and greatly to overrate their proficiency in
moral and religious excellence. But he felt this inter-
course to be peculiarly needful for one engaged in
occupations such as his : to the remembrance of the
good poor, whom he visited at Rugby, he often
recurred when absent from them ; and nothing can ex-
ceed the regret which they testify at his loss, and the
grateful affection with which they still speak of him,
pointing with delight to the seat which he used to
occupy by their firesides ; one of them especially, an
old almswoman, who died a few months after his own
decease, up to the last moment of consciousness never
ceasing to think of his visits to her, and of the hope
with which she looked forward now to seeing his face
once more again.

Closely as he was bound to Rugby by these and
similar bonds of social and familiar life, and yet more
closely by the charm with which its mere outward
aspect and localities were invested by his interest in
the school, both as an independent institution and as
his own sphere of duty, yet the place in itself never
had the same strong hold on his affections as Oxford
or Laleham ; and his holidays were almost always spent

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 22/

away from Rugby, either in short tours, or in later years
at his Westmoreland home, Fox How, a small estate
between Rydal and Ambleside, which he purchased in
1832, with the view of providing for himself a retreat,
in case of his retirement from the school, or for his
family in case of his death. The monotonous charac-
ter of the midland scenery of Warwickshire was to
him, with his strong love of natural beauty and vari-
ety, absolutely repulsive : there was something almost
touching in the eagerness with which, amidst that
"endless succession of fields and hedge-rows," he
would make the most of any features of a higher
order ; in the pleasure with which he would cherish
the few places where the current of the Avon was per-
ceptible, or where a glimpse of the horizon could be
discerned ; in the humorous despair with which he
would gaze on the dull expanse of fields eastward from
Rugby. "It is no wonder we do not like looking that
way, when one considers that there is nothing fine
between us and the Ural Mountains. Conceive what
you look over ; for you just miss Sweden, and look
over Holland, the north of Germany, and the centre
of Russia." With this absence of local attraction in
the place, and with the conviction that his occupations
and official station must make him look for his future
home elsewhere, " I feel," he said, " that I love Mid-
dlesex and Westmoreland, but I care nothing for
Warwickshire, and am in it like a plant sunk in the
ground in a pot : my roots never strike beyond the pot,
and I could be transplanted at any minute without

228 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

tearing or severing of my fibres. To the pot itself,
which is the school, I could cling very lovingly, were
it not that the laborious nature of the employment
makes me feel that it can be only temporary, and that,
if I live to old age, my age could not be spent in my
present situation."

Fox How, accordingly, became more and more the
centre of all his local and domestic affections. " It is
with a mixed feeling of solemnity and tenderness," he
said, " that I regard our mountain nest, whose surpass-
ing sweetness, I think I may safely say, adds a positive
happiness to every one of my waking hours passed in
it." When absent from it, it still, he said, " dwelt in
his memory as a vision of beauty from one vacation
to another ; " and when present at it, he felt that " no
hasty or excited admiration of a tourist could be com-
pared with the quiet and hourly delight of having the
mountains and streams as familiar objects, connected
with the enjoyments of home, one's family, one's books,
and one's friends," — " associated with our work-day
thoughts as well as our gala-day ones."

Then it was that, as he sat working in the midst of
his family, " never raising his eyes from the paper to
the window without an influx of ever new delights,"
he found that leisure for writing which he so much
craved at Rugby. Then it was that he enjoyed the
entire relaxation which he so much needed after his
school occupations, whether in the journeys of coming
and returning, — those long journeys, which, before they
were shortened by railway travelling, were to him, he

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 229

used to say, the twelve most restful days of the whole
year, — or in the birthday festivities of his children,
and the cheerful evenings when all subjects were dis-
cussed, from the gravest to the lightest, and when he
would read to them his favorite stories from Herodo-
tus, or his favorite English poets. Most of all, per-
haps, was to be observed his delight in those long
mountain-walks, when they would start with their pro-
visions for the day, himself the guide and life of the
party, always on the look-out how best to break the
ascent by gentle stages, comforting the little ones in
their falls, and helping forward those who were tired,
himself always keeping with the laggers, that none
might strain their strength by trying to be in front
with him ; and then, when his assistance was not
wanted, the liveliest of all ; his step so light, his eye so
quick in finding flowers to take home to those who
were not of the party.

Year by year bound him with closer ties to his new
home : not only Fox How itself with each particular
tree, the growth of which he had watched, and each
particular spot in the grounds, associated by him with
the playful names of his nine children, but also the
whole valley in which it lay, became consecrated with
something of a domestic feeling. Rydal Chapel, with
the congregation to which he had so often preached ;
the new circle of friends and acquaintance with whom
he kept up so familiar an intercourse ; the gorges
and rocky pools which owed their nomenclature to
him, — all became part of his habitual thoughts.

230 LIFE OF 7'HOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

He delighted to derive his imagery from the hills and
lakes of Westmoreland, and to trace in them the like-
nesses of his favorite scenes in poetry and history :
even their minutest features were of a kind that were
most attractive to him ; " the running streams " which
were to him " the most beautiful objects in nature ; "
the wild- flowers on the mountain sides, which were
to him, he said, " his music," and which, whether in
their scarcity at Rugby, or their profusion in West-
moreland, " loving them," as he used to say, " as a
child loves them/' he could not bear to see removed
from their natural places by the wayside, where others
might enjoy them as well as himself. The very peace-
fulness of all the historical and moral associations of
the scenery — free alike from the remains of feudal
ages in the past, and suggesting comparatively so little
of suffering or evil in the present — rendered doubly
grateful to him the refreshment which he there found
from the rough world in the school, or the sad feelings
awakened in his mind by the thoughts of his Church
and country. There he hoped, when the time should
have come for his retreat from Rugby, to spend his
declining years. Other visions, indeed, of a more
practical and laborious life, from time to time passed
before him : but Fox How was the image which most
constantly presented itself to him in all prospects
for the future; there he intended to have lived in
peace, maintaining his connection with the rising gen-
eration by receiving pupils from the Universities ; there,
under the shade of the trees of his own planting, he

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 231

hoped in his old age to give to the world the fruits of
his former experience and labors, by executing those
works for which at Rugby he felt himself able only to
prepare the way, or lay the first foundations, and never
again leave his retirement till (to use his own expres-
sion) " his bones should go to Grasmere churchyard,
to lie under the yews which Wordsworth planted, and
to have the Rotha, with its deep and silent pools, pass-
ing by."

232 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

CHAPTER V.

LAST YEAR, 1842.

IT was now the fourteenth year of Dr. Arnold's stay
at Rugby, — a year, on every account, of peculiar in-
terest to himself and his scholars. It had opened with
an unusual mortality in the school. One of his
colleagues, and seven of his pupils, mostly from causes
unconnected with each other, had been carried off
within its first quarter ; and the return of the boys had
been delayed beyond the accustomed time in conse-
quence of a fever lingering in Rugby, during which
period he had a detachment of the higher forms
residing near or with him at Fox How. It was
during his stay here that he received from Lord Mel-
bourne the offer of the Regius Professorship of Modern
History at Oxford, vacant by the death of Dr. Nares.
How joyfully he caught at this unexpected realization
of his fondest hopes for his latest years, and how
bright a gleam it imparted to the sunset of his life,
will best be expressed by his own letters and by the
account of his Lectures.

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 233

TQ THE REV. DR. HAWKINS.

Fox How, Aug. 21, 1841.

You may perhaps have heard my news already ; but I must
tell you myself, because you are so much connected with my
pleasure in it. I have accepted the Regius Professorship of
Modern History, chiefly to gratify my earnest longing to have
some direct connection with Oxford ; and I have thought with
no small delight that I should now see something of you in the
natural course of things every year, for my wife and myself
hope to take lodgings for ten days or a fortnight every Lent
Term, at the end of our Christmas holidays, for me to give my
lectures. I could not resist the temptation of accepting the
office, though it will involve some additional work ; and if I
live to leave Rugby, the income, though not great, will be
something to us when we are poor people at Fox How. But
to get a regular situation in Oxford would have tempted me,
I believe, had it been accompanied by no salary at all.

I go up to Oxford on the 2d of December, Thursday week,
to read my inaugural lecture. I suppose it is too much to
hope that you could be there, but it would give me the greatest
pleasure to utter my first words in Oxford in your hearing. I
am going to give a general sketch first of the several parts of
history generally, and their relation to each other, and then
of the peculiarities of modern history. This will do very well
for an inaugural lecture; but what to choose for my course
after we return from Fox How I can scarcely tell, considering
how little time I shall have for any deep research, and how
important it is at the same time that my first lectures should
not be superficial. . . . Our examination begins on Wednes-
day ; still, as " Thucydides " is done, and gone to the press, and
as my lecture will be finished, I hope, in one or two evenings
more, I expect to be able to go on again with my history
before the end of the week ; and I may do a little in it before
we go to Fox How.

234 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

On the 2d of December he entered on his pro-
fessorial duties by delivering his inaugural lecture.
His school work not permitting him to be absent more
than one whole day, he left Rugby with Mrs. Arnold,
very early in the morning, and, occupying himself from
the time it became light in looking over the school
exercises, reached Oxford at noon. The day had
been looked forward to with eager expectation : and
the usual lecture-rooms in the Clarendon Buildings
being unable to contain the crowds that, to the num-
ber of four or five hundred, flocked to hear him, the
" Theatre " was used for the occasion ; and there, its
whole area and lower galleries entirely filled, the pro-
fessor arose from his place, amidst the highest univer-
sity authorities in their official seats, and in that clear,
manly voice, which so long retained its hold on the
memory of those who heard it, began, amidst deep
silence, the opening words of his inaugural lecture.

The time which he had originally fixed for his retire-
ment from Rugby was now drawing near ; and the new
sphere opened to him in his professorship at Oxford,
seemed to give a fixedness to his future prospects,
which would naturally increase his long-cherished
wishes of greater leisure and repose. But he still felt
himself in the vigor of life, and used to rejoice in the
thought that the forty-ninth year, fixed by Aristotle as
the acme of the human faculties, lay still some years
before him. The education of his two younger sons
was a strong personal inducement to him to remain a

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 235

short time longer in his situation. His professorial
labors were, of course, but an appendage to his duties
in the school ; and when some of the unforeseen details
of the entrance on his new office had seemed likely to.
deprive him of the place which he had so delighted
to receive, — "in good and sober truth," he writes to-
Archbishop Whately, " I believe that this and all other-
things are ordered far more wisely than I could order
them, and it will seem a manifest call to turn my mind
more closely to the great work which is before me here-
at Rugby." The unusual amount also of sickness and ;
death which had marked the beginning of the school
year, naturally gave an increased earnestness to his
dealings with the boys. His latest scholars were struck
by the great freedom and openness with which he-
spoke to them on more serious subjects ; the more-
directly practical applications which he made of their
Scriptural lessons ; the emphasis with which he called
their attention to the contrast between Christian faith*
and love, and that creed of later paganism, which-
made " the feelings of man towards the Deity to be
exactly those with which we gaze at a beautiful sun-
set." The same cause would occasion those frequent
thoughts of death which appear in his chapel sermons,
and in his more private life during this last year.
There had never, indeed, been a time from his earliest
manhood, in which the uncertainty of human life had'
not been one of the fixed images of his mind ; and'
many instances would recur to all who knew him, of
the way in which it was constantly blended with all his,

236 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

thoughts of the future. "Shall I tell you, my little
boy/' he once said to one of his younger children,
whose joyful glee at the approaching holidays he had
gently checked, — "shall I tell you why I call it sad?"
and he then repeated to him the simple story of
his own early childhood, — how his own father had
made him read to him a sermon on the text, "Boast
not thyself of to-morrow/' on the very Sunday evening
before his sudden death. "Now cannot you see,
when you talk with such certainty about this day week
and what we shall do, why it seems sad to me ? "
But it was natural that such expressions should have
been more often remarked by those who heard them
during this year, even had they not been in themselves
more frequent. " It is one of the most solemn things
I do," he said to one of his children, who asked him
why, in the titlepage of his MS. volume of sermons,
he always wrote the date only of its commencement,
and left a blank for that of its completion, — " to write
the beginning of that sentence, and think that I may
perhaps not live to finish it." And his pupils recol-
lected the manner in which he had announced to them,
before morning prayers, the unexpected death of one
of their number : " We ought all to take to ourselves
these repeated warnings ; God, in his mercy, sends
them to us. I say in his mercy, because they are
warnings to all of us here, — we ought all to feel them
as such," — adding emphatically, — " and I am sure
J feel it so myself."

Whatever might be the general interest of this

LIFE OF THOMAS AKNOLD, D.D. 237

closing period, was deepened during the last month
by accidental causes, into which it is not necessary to
enter, but which became the means of drawing forth
all the natural tenderness of his character more fully
than any previous passage of his life. There was
something in the added gentleness and kindness of his
whole manner and conversation, — watching himself,
and recalling his words if he thought they would be
understood unkindly, — which even in his more gen-
eral intercourse would make almost every one who
saw him at that time connect their last recollections
of him with some trait of thoughtfulness for others,
and forgetfulness of himself, and which, to those
nearest and dearest to him, seemed to awaken a con-
sciousness, amounting almost to awe, of a visible
growth in those qualities which are most naturally con-
nected with the thought of another world. There was
something also in the expressions of his own more per-
sonal feelings, — few and short as they ever were, but
for that reason the more impressive when they did
escape him, — which stamped them with a more than
usual solemnity. Such were some of the passages in a
private diary, which he now commenced for the first
time, but not known till after his death by any, except
her who alone shared his inmost thoughts, and who
could not but treasure up in her memory every word
connected with the beginning of this custom. It was
about three weeks before his end, whilst confined to his
room for a few days by an attack of feverish illness,
to which, especially when in anxiety, he had always

238 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

from time to time been liable, that he called her to his
bedside, and expressed to her how, within the last
few days, he seemed to have " felt quite a rush of love
in his heart towards God and Christ ; " and how he
hoped that " all this might make him more gentle and
tender," and that he might not soon lose the impres-
sion thus made upon him ; adding, that, as a help to
keeping it alive, he intended to write something in the
evenings before he retired to rest.

From this diary, written the last thing at night, not
daily, but from time to time in each week, it has been
thought right to give the following extracts : —

" MAY 22. — I am now within a few weeks of completing my
forty-seventh year. Am I not old enough to view life as it is,
and to contemplate steadily its end — what it is coming to, and
must come to — what all things are without God ? I know that
my senses are on the very eve of becoming weaker, and that
my faculties will then soon begin to decline too, — whether
rapidly or not, I know not — but they will decline. Is there
not one faculty which never declines, which is the seed and
the seal of immortality ? and what has become of that faculty
in me ? What is it to live unto God ? May God open my eyes
to see him by faith, in and through his Son Jesus Christ ! may
he draw me to him, and keep me with him, making his will my
will, his love my love, his strength my strength ! and may he
make me feel that pretended strength, not derived from him, is
no strength, but the worst weakness ! May his strength be
perfected in my weakness!

" TUESDAY EVENING, MAY 24. — Two days have passed, and
I am mercifully restored to my health and strength. To-mor-
row I hope to be able to resume my usual duties. Now, then, is
the dangerous moment. . . . O gracious Father ! keep me now
through thy Holy Spirit ; keep my heart soft and tender now in

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 239

health and amidst the bustle of the world ; keep the thought
of thyself present to me as my Father in Jesus Christ; and
keep alive in me a spirit of love and meekness to all men, that
I may be at once gentle and active and firm. Oh, strengthen me
to bear pain or sickness or danger, or whatever thou shalt be
pleased to lay upon me, as Christ's soldier and servant! and
let my faith overcome the world daily. Strengthen my faith,
that I may realize to my mind the things eternal, — death and
things after death, and thyself. Oh, save me from my sins, from
myself, and from my spiritual enemy, and keep me ever thine
through Jesus Christ! Lord, hear my prayers also for my
dearest wife, my dear children, my many and kind friends, my
household, — for all those committed to my care, and for us to
whom they are committed : I pray also for our country, and
for thy holy Church in all the world. Perfect and bless the
work of thy Spirit in the hearts of all thy people ; and may thy
kingdom come, and thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven !
I pray for this, and for all that thou seest me to need, for
Jesus Christ's sake.

"WEDNESDAY, MAY 25. — Again, before I go to rest, would
I commit myself to God's care, through Christ, beseeching him
to forgive me all my sins of this day past, and to keep alive
his grace in my heart, and to cleanse me from all indolence,
pride, harshness, and selfishness, and to give me the spirit of
meekness, humility, firmness, and love. O Lord ! keep thyself
present to me ever, and perfect thy strength in my weakness.
Take me and mine under thy blessed care, this night and ever-
more, through Jesus Christ.

"THURSDAY, MAY 26. ... O Lord! keep thyself present to
me always, and teach me to come to thee by the One and Liv-
ing Way, thy Son Jesus Christ. Keep me humble and gentle.
2. Self-denying. 3. Firm and patient. 4. Active. 5. Wise to
know thy will, and to discern the truth. 6. Loving, that I may
learn to resemble thee and my Saviour. O Lord ! forgive me
for all my sins, and save me and guide me and strengthen me
through Jesus Christ.

240 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

" MAY 29. ... O Lord ! save me from idle words, and grant
that my heart may be truly cleansed and filled with thy Holy
Spirit, and that I may arise to serve thee, and lie down to sleep
in entire confidence in thee, and submission to thy will, ready
for life or for death. Let me live for the day, not over-
charged with worldly cares, but feeling that my treasure is not
here, and desiring truly to be joined to thee in thy heavenly
kingdom, and to those who are already gone to thee. O
Lord ! let me wait on patiently ; but do thou save me from
sin, and guide me with thy Spirit, and keep me with thee,
and in faithful obedience to thee, through Jesus Christ thy
Son our Lord.

" MAY 31. — Another day and another month succeed. May
God keep my mind and heart fixed on him, and cleanse me
from all sin ! I would wish to keep a watch over my tongue,
as to vehement speaking and censuring of others. I would
desire to be more thoughtful of others, more thoughtful * ultro '
of my own head, without the suggestions of others. I would
desire to remember my latter end, to which I am approaching,
going down the hill of life, and having done far more than half
my work. May God keep me in the hour of death, through
Jesus Christ, and preserve me from over fear, as well as from
presumption ! Now, O Lord ! whilst I am in health, keep my
heart fixed on thee by faith, and then I shall not lose thee in
sickness or in death. Guide and strengthen and enkindle me,
and bless those dearest to me, and those committed to my
charge, and keep them thine, and guide and support them in
thy holy ways. Keep sin far from them, O Lord ! and let it
not come upon them through any neglect of mine. O Lord !
inspire me with zeal, and guide me with wisdom, that thy name
may be known to those committed to my care, and that
they may be made and kept always thine. Grant this, O Lord f
through Jesus Christ my Saviour, and may my whole trust
towards thee be through his merits and intercessions !

"THURSDAY EVENING, JUNE 2. — Again the day is over,
and I am going to rest. O Lord ! preserve me this night, and

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 24!

strengthen me to bear whatever thou shalt see fit to lay on me,
whether pain, sickness, danger, or distress.

"SUNDAY, JUNE 5. — I have been just looking over a news-
paper, one of the most painful and solemn studies in the world
if it be read thoughtfully. So much of sin and so much of suf-
fering in the world, as are there displayed, and no one seems
able to remedy either. And then the thought of my own pri-
vate life, so full of comforts, is very startling when I contrast
it with the lot of millions, whose portion is so full of distress
or of trouble. May I be kept humble and zealous, and may
God give me grace to labor in my generation for the good of
my brethren, and for his glory ! May he keep me his by night
and by day, and strengthen me to bear and to do his will, through
Jesus Christ ! "

[LAST DAY, JUNE u.]

On Saturday morning he was busily employed in
examining some of the boys in Ranke's " History of the
Popes," in the preparation of which he had sat up late
on the previous night ; and some of the answers which
had pleased him he recounted with great interest at
breakfast. The chief part of the day he was engaged
in finishing the business of the school, not accepting
proffered assistance, even in the mechanical details, but
going through the whole work himself. He went his-
usual round of the school to distribute the prizes to
the boys before their final dispersion, and to take
leave of those who were not returning after the holi-
days. "One more -lesson," he had said to his own
form on the previous evening, " I shall have with you
on Sunday afternoon, and then I will say to you what
I have to say." That parting address to which they
were always accustomed to look forward with such

242 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

pleasure, never came. But it is not to be wondered
at, if they remarked with peculiar interest, that the
last subject which he had set them for an exercise was
" Domus Ultima ; " that the last translation for Latin
verses was from the touching lines on the death of Sir
Philip Sidney, in Spenser's " Ruins of Time ; " that
the last words with which he closed his last lecture on
the New Testament were in commenting on the pas-
sage of St. John, " It doth not yet appear what we
shall be : but we know that, when he shall appear, we
shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." —
" So, too," he said, " in the Corinthians, ' For now we
see through a glass darkly, but then face to face/ —
Yes," he added, with marked fervency, "the mere
contemplation of Christ shall transform us into his
likeness."

In the afternoon he took his ordinary walk and bathe,
enjoying the rare beauty of the day ; and he stopped
again and again to look up into the unclouded blue of
the summer sky, " the blue depth of ether " which had
been at all times one of his most favorite images in
nature, " conveying," as he said, " ideas so much more
. beautiful, as well as more true, than the ancient con-
ceptions of the heavens as an iron firmament." At
dinner he was in high spirits, talking with his several
guests on subjects of social or historical interest, and
recurring with great pleasure to his early geological
studies, and describing with much interest his recent
visit to Naseby with Carlyle, " its position on some of
the highest table land in England, — the streams falling

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 243

on the one side into the Atlantic, on the other into the
German Ocean, — far away, too, from any town, —
Market Harborough, the nearest, into which the Cava-
liers were chased, late in the long summer evening,
on the fourteenth of June, you know."

In the evening he took a short stroll, as usual, on
the lawn in the further garden, with the friend, and
former pupil, from whom the account of these last con-
versations has been chiefly derived. His conversa-
tion with him turned on some points in the school of
Oxford Theology, in regard to which he thought him
to be in error : particularly he dwelt seriously, but
kindly, on what he conceived to be false notions of the
Eucharist, — insisting especially, that our Lord forbids
us to suppose that the highest spiritual blessings can
be conferred only or chiefly through the reception of
material elements, — urging with great earnestness,
when it was said that there might be various modes of
spiritual agency, " My dear Lake, God be praised, we
are told the great mode by which we are affected, —
we have his own blessed assurance, ' The words which
I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.' "

At nine o'clock was a supper, which, on the last
evening of the summer half-year, he gave to the Sixth-
Form boys of his own house ; and they were struck
with the cheerfulness and liveliness of his manner, talk-
ing of the end of the half-year, and the pleasure of his
return to Fox How in the next week, and observing,
in allusion to the departure of so many of the boys,
" How strange the chapel will look to-morrow ! "

244 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D

The school business was now completely over. The
old schoolhouse servant, who had been about the place
many years, came to receive the final accounts, and
delighted afterwards to tell how his master had kept
him a quarter of an hour talking to him with more
than usual kindness and confidence.

One more act, the last before he retired that night,
remains to be recorded, — the last entry in his diary,
which was not known or seen till the next morning,
when it was discovered by those to whom every word
bore a weight and meaning which he who wrote it had
but little anticipated.

" SATURDAY EVENING, JUNE 1 1. — The day after to-morrow
is my birthday, if I am permitted to live to see it, — my forty-
seventh birthday since my birth. How large a portion of my
life on earth is already passed ! And then — what is to follow
this life? How visibly my outward work seems contracting
and softening away into the gentler employments of old age.
In one sense, how nearly can I now say, * Vixi.' And I thank
God, that, as far as ambition is concerned, it is, I trust, fully
mortified : I have no desire other than to step back from my
present place in the world, and not to rise to a higher. Still,
there are works, which, with God's permission, I would do
before the night cometh, — especially that great work, if I might
be permitted to take part in it. But above all, let me mind my
own personal work, — to keep myself pure and zealous and
believing, — laboring to do God's will, yet not anxious that it
should be done by me rather than by others, if God disapproves
of my doing it."

It was between five and six o'clock on Sunday
morning that he awoke with a sharp pain across his

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 245

chest, which he mentioned to his wife, on her asking
whether he felt well, — adding that he had felt it
slightly on the preceding day, before and after bathing.
He then again composed himself to sleep : but her
watchful care, always anxious, even to nervousness, at
the least indication of illness, was at once awakened ;
and on finding from him that the pain increased, and
that it seemed to pass from his chest to his left arm,
her alarm was so much aroused from a remembrance
of having heard of this in connection with angina pec-
toris, and its fatal consequences, that, in spite of his
remonstrances, she rose, and called up an old servant,
whom they usually consulted in cases of illness, from
her having so long attended the sick-bed of his sister
Susannah. Re-assured by her confidence that there
was no ground for fear, but still anxious, Mrs. Arnold
returned to his room. She observed him, as she was
dressing herself, lying still, but with his hands clasped,
his lips moving, and his eyes raised upwards, as if
engaged in prayer, when all at once he repeated, firmly
and earnestly, " And Jesus said unto him, Thomas,
because thou hast seen, thou hast believed : blessed are
they who have not seen, and yet have believed ; " and
soon afterwards, with a solemnity of manner and depth
of utterance which spoke more than the words them-
selves, " But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all
are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons."

From time to time he seemed to be in severe suf-
fering, and, on the entrance of the old servant before
mentioned, said, " Ah, Elizabeth ! if I had been as

246 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

much accustomed to pain as dear Susannah was, I
should bear it better." To his wife, however, he
uttered no expressions of acute pain, dwelling only on
the moments of comparative ease, and observing that
he did not know what it was. But the more than
usual earnestness which marked his tone and manner,
especially in repeating the verses from Scripture, had
again aroused her worst fears ; and she ordered mes-
sengers to be sent for medical assistance, which he
had at first requested her not to do, from not liking to
disturb at that early hour the usual medical attendant,
who had been suffering from indisposition. She then
took up the Prayer Book, and was looking for a Psalm
to read to him, when he said quickly, " The fifty- first,"
— which she accordingly read by his bedside, remind-
ing him, at the seventh verse, that it was the favorite
verse of one of the old almswomen whom he was in
the habit of visiting ; and at the twelfth verse, " O give
me the comfort of thy help again, and stablish me
with thy free Spirit : " he repeated it after her very
earnestly. She then read the prayer in the " Visitation
of the Sick," beginning, "The Almighty Lord, who is
a most strong tower," etc., kneeling herself at the foot
of .the bed, and altering it into a common prayer for
them both.

As the clock struck a quarter to seven, Dr. Bucknill
(the son of the usual medical attendant) entered the
room. He was then lying on his back, his counte-
nance much as usual ; his pulse, though regular, was
very quick ; and there was cold perspiration on the brow

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 247

and cheeks. But his tone was cheerful. " How is
your father?" he asked, on the physician's entrance :
" I am sorry to disturb you so early : I knew that
your father was unwell, and that you had enough to
do." He described the pain, speaking of it as having
been very severe, and then said, " What is it? " Whilst
the physician was pausing for a moment before he
replied, the pain returned, and remedies were applied
till it passed away ; and Mrs. Arnold, seeing by the
measures used that the medical man was himself
alarmed, left the room for a few moments to call up
her second son, the eldest of the family then at Rugby,
and impart her anxiety to him ; and during her absence
her husband again asked what it was, and was answered
that it was spasm of the heart. He exclaimed, in
his peculiar manner of recognition, " Ha ! " and then,
on being asked if he had ever in his life fainted, " No,
never." If he had ever had difficulty of breathing?
" No, never." If he had ever had sharp pain in the
chest? "No, never." If any of his family had ever
had disease of the chest ? " Yes, my father had —
he died of it." — " What age was he ?" — " Fifty- three."
-"Was it suddenly fatal ?" — " Yes, suddenly fatal."
He then asked if disease of the heart was a common
disease ? " Not very common." — " Where do we find
it most?" — "In large towns, I think." — "Why? "
(Two or three causes were mentioned.) " Is it gen-
erally fatal? " — "Yes, I am afraid it is."

The physician then quitted the house for medicine,
leaving Mrs. Arnold, now fully aware from him of hei

248 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

husband's state. At this moment she was joined by
her son, who entered the room with no serious appre-
hension ; and, on his coming up to the bed, his father,
with his usual gladness of expression towards him,
asked, "How is your deafness, my boy?" (he had
been suffering from it the night before) ; and then,
playfully alluding to an old accusation against him,
"You must not stay here : you know you do not like a
sick-room." He then sat down with his mother at the
foot of the bed ; and presently his father said in a low
voice, " My son, thank God for me ! " and, as his son
did not at once catch his meaning, he went on, saying,
" Thank God, Tom, for giving me this pain. I have
suffered so little pain in my life, that I feel it is very
good for me : now God has given it to me, and I do
so thank him for it." And again, after a pause, he
said, — alluding to a wish which his son had often
heard him express, that, if he ever had to suffer pain,
his faculties might be unaffected by it, — " How thank-
ful I am that my head is untouched." Meanwhile his
wife, who still had sounding in her ears the tone in
which he had repeated the passage from the Epistle to
the Hebrews, again turned to the Prayer Book, and
began to read the Exhortation in which it occurs in
the " Visitation of the Sick." He listened with deep
attention, saying emphatically, "Yes," at the end of
many of the sentences. " There should be no greater
comfort to Christian persons than to be made like unto
Christ." — "Yes." — "By suffering patiently troubles,
adversities, and sickness." — " Yes." — " He entered

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 249

not into his glory before he was crucified." — "Yes."
At the words, " everlasting life," she stopped ; and his
son said, " I wish, dear papa, we had you at Fox
How." He made no answer ; but the last conscious
look, which remained fixed in his wife's memory, was
the look of intense tenderness and love with which he
smiled upon them both at that moment.

The physician now returned with the medicines,
and the former remedies were applied : there was a
slight return of the spasms, after which he said, " If
the pain is again as severe as it was before you came,
I do not know how I can bear it." He then, with
his eyes fixed upon the physician, who rather felt than
saw them upon him, so as to make it impossible not
to answer the exact truth, repeated one or two of his
former questions about the cause of the disease, and
ended with asking, "Is it likely to return?" and, on
being told that it was, " Is it generally suddenly fatal? "
— " Generally." On being asked whether he had any
pain, he replied that he had none, but from the mus-
tard plaster on his chest, with a remark on the severity
of the spasms in comparison with this outward pain,
and then, a few moments afterwards, inquired what
medicine was to be given, and on being told, answered,
"Ah ! very well." The physician, who was dropping
the laudanum into a glass, turned round, and saw him
looking quite calm, but with his eyes shut. In another
minute he heard a rattle in the throat, and a convulsive
struggle, — flew to the bed, caught his head upon his
shoulder, and called to one of the servants to fetch

250 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

Mrs. Arnold. She had but just left the room before his
last conversation with the physician, in order to ac-
quaint her son with his father's danger, of which he
was still unconscious, when she heard herself called
from above. She rushed up-stairs, told her son to
bring the rest of the children, and with her own hands
applied the remedies that were brought, in the hope of
reviving animation, though herself feeling, from the
moment that she saw him, that he had already passed
away. He was indeed no longer conscious. The
sobs and cries of his children, as they entered and saw
their father's state, made no impression upon him :
the eyes were fixed ; the countenance was unmoved ;
there was a heaving of the chest ; deep gasps escaped
at prolonged intervals ; and just as the usual medical
attendant arrived, and as the old schoolhouse servant,
in an agony of grief, rushed with the others into the
room, in the hope of seeing his master once more,
he breathed his last.

It must have been shortly before eight A.M. that he
expired, though it was naturally impossible for those
who were present to adjust their recollections of what
passed with precise exactness of time or place. So
short and sudden had been the seizure, that hardly any
one out of the household itself had heard of his illness
before its fatal close. His guest, and former pupil
(who had slept in a remote part of the house), was
coming down to breakfast as usual, thinking of ques-
tions to which the conversation of the preceding night
had given rise, and which, by the great kindness of

LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 2$ I

his manner, he felt doubly encouraged to ask him,,,
when he was met on the staircase by the announce-
ment of his death. The masters knew nothing till the
moment when, almost at the same time at the different
boarding-houses, the fatal message was delivered in all
its startling abruptness, " that Dr. Arnold was dead."
What that Sunday was in Rugby it is hard fully to rep-
resent, — the incredulity, the bewilderment, the agitat-
ing inquiries for every detail ; the blank, more awful
than sorrow, that prevailed through the vacant services
of that long and dreary day ; the feeling as if the very
place had passed away with him who had so emphati-
cally been in every sense its head; the sympathy
which hardly dared to contemplate, and which yet
could not but fix the thoughts and looks of all on the
desolate house, where the fatherless family were gath-
ered round the chamber of death.

Five of his children were awaiting their father's arri-
val at Fox How. To them the news was brought on
Monday morning, by the same pupil who had been in
the house at his death, and who long would remember
the hour when he reached the place, just as the early
summer dawn — the dawn of that forty-seventh birth-
day— was breaking over that beautiful valley, every
shrub and every flower in all its freshness and luxuri-
ance, speaking of him who had so tenderly fostered
their growth around the destined home of his old age.
On the evening of that day, which they had been fondly
preparing to celebrate with its usual pleasures, they ar-
rived at Rugby in time to see their father's face in death..

252 LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.

He was buried on the following Friday, the very
day week, since, from the same house, two and two in
like manner, so many of those who now joined in the
funeral procession to the chapel, had followed him in
full health and vigor to the public speeches in the
school. It was attended by his whole family, by those
of his friends and former pupils who had assembled
from various parts during the week, and by many of
the neighboring clergy and of the inhabitants of the
town, both rich and poor. The ceremony was per-
formed by Mr. Moultrie, rector of Rugby, from that
place which, for fourteen years, had been occupied
only by him who was gone, and to whom every part
of that chapel owed its peculiar interest; and his
remains were deposited in the chancel immediately
under the communion-table.

Once more his family met in the chapel on the fol-
lowing Sunday, and partook of the holy communion
at his grave, and heard read the sermon preached by
'••him in the preceding year, on " Faith Triumphant in
Death." And yet one more service in connection with
him took place in the chapel, when, on the first Sun-
day of the next half-year, the school, which had dis-
persed on the eve of his death, assembled again within
its walls under his successor, and witnessed in the
funeral services with which that day was observed, the
last public tribute of sorrow to their departed master.

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29

JUL2219?

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1863

LD 21-50»n-8f-32

YB 04575